It’s been just eight years since Barack Obama’s first term began. Though it seems like a lifetime ago, you might recall a signature moment of his early presidency in which alcohol sat centre stage. Cambridge Massachusetts police sergeant James Crowley had arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in his own home, mistaking him for a burglar in an apparent case of racial profiling. Given the importance of race in Obama’s narrative of hope and unity, the president took a personal and vocal interest in the incident. And so, in an effort to calm the waters, he invited both men to join him for a conciliatory chat in the White House Rose Garden over a beer, just “three folks having a drink at the end of the day.”

The story still reads like a parable about why Canadians take such pride in their booze. According to a survey conducted as part of The Canada Project, 41 per cent of us prefer our beer, wines and spirits to be home-grown. That’s an impressive show of patriotic pride given the many options available at the liquor store. And if we look deep enough, beer probably lies at the heart of why. If the pollsters had asked Canadians to forget about spirits and wine and focus on their suds preferences alone, that home-grown predilection might be greater still. We are surely some years away from making a world class tequila; Beer likely carries a lot of statistical weight here. But more than this, beer is likely where we forged the original link between our nationhood and what we drink. Like a first love, brew became the cultural standard every other home-grown beverage would have to meet to be authentically ours.

To understand why it holds this special status for Canadians—and why it was served to two angry men on a patio at the White House —you need to know two things about beer as a consumer product: First, people never buy anything just to solve a problem, no matter what they told you in business school. The utility of any product falls somewhere on a continuum between what it does and what it says about us, determined at least partly by how observably it’s consumed. A leaf rake, for example, deployed in grudging solitude, tends to be chosen based on how well it will work. Shoes, on the other hand, might be selected at least partly for what kind of statement they will make, because other people will see them and assume our choice was socially motivated. Beer is more like shoes than rakes. From the cash register to the patio, everybody knows what you’re drinking, and often which brand you’ve chosen. Like it or not, beer speaks for you.

Second, as a category, beverage alcohol has a more nuanced social language than most. Very few of us drink one kind of booze to the exclusion of all others. Instead, we choose from a menu of personal preferences based on the option that best suits our mood and the situation. That selection usually has a lot to do with declaring our intentions for what will follow. To see the truth in this, just imagine you’re having a first lunch with a new boss or someone you met on OKCupid. The message you might send ordering a glass of pinot grigio is starkly different—and less uncomfortable—than the one you’d send ordering a margarita. Socially, choosing your booze is like the first move in a chess game.

Which brings us back to the White House Rose Garden. Obama was thinking like a Canadian that day, deliberately trading on the particular social signal that beer sends (and the photo opportunity it would create) to prove that “what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart”. That’s exactly why Canadians claim beer as part of our cultural heritage. Beer is a leveler. It declares class distinctions moot and invites easy dialogue, even between a black Harvard professor and a white cop. Like donning blue jeans or a Roots sweatshirt, choosing beer specifically repudiates status and promotes inclusion. Most of Canada’s beverage alcohol brands swim in beer’s cultural wake. They’re liquid symbols of the quality we admire most about ourselves as a nation. And maybe, these days, the one we’d most like to see exported to the rest of the world.

]]>Who will stand up for Canadian beer drinkers?http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/who-will-stand-up-for-canadian-beer-drinkers/
Thu, 08 Jun 2017 15:40:08 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=1027053The beer lobby is fighting a tax that would make your brews cost more. But beer drinkers are actually the yeast of its concerns.

And Beer Canada, the brewers lobby group that styles itself as “the national voice of beer,” is not happy with the federal government and its taxing ways.

In its recent 2017 budget, Ottawa hiked excise taxes on beer, wine and spirits by two per cent. No big deal there. Canadians are plenty used to sin tax hikes at budget time. What’s new is that the federal Liberals have now given themselves the right to increase this tax every year by the rate of inflation—without the bother of having to include the future tax hikes in subsequent budgets.

Nearly 50 per cent of the price of beer in Canada, on average, is tax: either federal or provincial excise and sales taxes, or provincial liquor board markups. It’s one of the highest overall beer tax rates in the world. And now Ottawa’s take is going up automatically every year on April 1. Forever.

On a cash basis, the amounts involved appear modest. That two-per-cent increase is about 5 cents more per case of 24 beers. But Harford is quick to point out that due to the “tax on tax on tax” feature of beer pricing, the effective total government haul is doubled. Plus, it all adds up: Over the next five years, Ottawa projects it will raise an additional $470 million from its inflation-adjusted alcohol excise tax hike.

Unlike sales taxes, excise taxes are imposed at the manufacturer level. And inflation-indexing of such taxes have caused big problems in the past. A similar policy in the early 1980s led to widespread shut-downs in the Canadian distillery business during a period of high inflation, and hobbled the domestic spirits industry for decades.

This time around, the beer industry is worried the ever-increasing tax will exacerbate headwinds already affecting their own market segment. “We’ve seen an 11 per cent decline in per capita beer consumption in Canada over the past ten years,” says Harford. “And taxes are a big part of that.” Wine consumption in particular has been growing strongly at beer’s expense. (Wine from Canadian-grown grapes is exempt from the federal excise tax.) And with competition from a legalized marijuana industry looming, brewers are getting nervous about their future share of Canadian’s relaxation budget.

The entire alcohol industry has also latched on to the notion of parliamentary responsibility in making its case against the inflation escalator. Building in perpetual increases for excise taxes allows Ottawa to avoid public scrutiny in future budgets while reaping the reward of higher revenues. “Canadians will never again have a chance to talk about this tax increase,” says Harford. It’s a legitimate concern. To head off this possibility, Beer Canada has been lobbying federal senators of all parties to encourage them to exercise their new-found independence by rejecting the inflation adjustment aspect of the tax. A possible Senate v. House of Commons showdown over beer taxes could come later this month.

Whatever happens, however, Canadian beer drinkers shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking this battle has anything to do with them, or how much they pay for beer.

That’s because while the “national voice of beer” is leading the crusade against this particular inflationary beer tax, Beer Canada is also a longtime supporter of a larger and even more pernicious form of government-mandated beer price increases—what’s known as social reference pricing.

In every province except Alberta, there exists a provincially mandated floor price for beer—based on a standard case of 24 bottles, inclusive of tax and deposit—that ranges from $26.83 in Manitoba to $45.58 in Prince Edward Island. These minimum prices are intended to protect Canadians from our own baser instincts; making beer expensive is supposed to prevent us from over-indulging on cheap suds. It’s a holdover from the Prohibition era that enjoys broad support from politicians, lobby groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving—and big beer companies. For the vast majority of Canadians who enjoy beer in a responsible manner, however, it’s a punitive and regressive policy.

A July 2015 report from Canada’s National Alcohol Strategy advisory committee—a document that features Harford’s name on the cover, by the way—specifically recommends that “social reference prices need to be updated annually to keep pace with inflation.” In fact, government-mandated minimum beer prices tend to rise even faster than inflation.

In Ontario, for example, the minimum price for 24 bottles of beer was an even $24 in 2008; today, it’s $30.70. That’s an increase of 28 per cent over a time when the cumulative inflation rate has been less than 15 per cent. When it comes to making Canadians pay more for beer, the federal excise tax hasn’t a patch on minimum pricing policies.

Asked about Beer Canada’s position on social reference pricing, Harford says, “we are not opposed to it. It’s a policy that governments use to encourage moderation.” Of course, you could say the same thing about excise taxes.

To recap: the beer industry is upset over Ottawa’s inflation-adjusted tax hike of approximately 10 cents per case. But they’re “not opposed” to other government policies that raise the price of beer by much bigger amounts, and which already include annual inflation adjustments. Both measures force consumers to pay more for their beer. But only one improves beer industry profitability.

So yes: When beer speaks, Canadians listen. But who speaks for beer drinkers?

]]>How Steam Whistle carved a niche for itself in a crowded markethttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/how-steam-whistle-carved-a-niche-for-itself-in-a-crowded-market/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/how-steam-whistle-carved-a-niche-for-itself-in-a-crowded-market/#commentsWed, 19 Apr 2017 21:32:55 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=1002343Steam Whistle’s founders had plans to launch a line of beers. They found success by focusing on a single one.

In the summer of 1998, Greg Taylor, Cam Heaps and Greg Cromwell were laid off by the Upper Canada Brewing Company. But, they quickly decided, they weren’t ready to stop making great beer. So, across the campfire on a canoe trip, they hatched a plan to create their very own craft brewery.

Nineteen years later, what began as a fireside brainstorm has become Steam Whistle Brewing, Canada’s largest independent craft brewer, with shipments to every province in the country except Quebec. It’s also been named one of Canada’s best managed companies nine years in a row.

“Our goal from day one was to become Canada’s most respected beer,” says Taylor, who leads the company alongside Heaps (Cromwell is no longer involved in the business). Initially called the Three Fired Guys Brewing Company, the name changed to Steam Whistle in 1999 after Heaps suggested that they put a steam whistle on the factory to let workers know when it was five o’clock. Drawing on that symbolism, the company headquartered itself in Toronto’s historic John Street Roundhouse, which served as a repair site for Canadian Pacific Rail locomotives until the 1980s. “They use the centrality of the roundhouse to their great advantage,” says beer writer Stephen Beaumont. “They have one of the best brewery tours in the city, and they regularly sell out in advance.” He’s quick to point out that thirsty tourists in the area often find themselves wandering by the brewery. “If you walk by on the street, they will practically thrust a sampler of beer into your hand—they’re very good at making sure people are aware of them.”

Steam Whistle uses traditional brewing techniques developed in the Czech Republic to make their pilsner, using spring water and GMO-free malted barley, hops and yeast. In the beginning, the plan was to perfect one beer and then branch out into other offerings. “We started out making only our signature pilsner, because we thought it was wise to focus with a fledgling business,” Taylor explains. “We wanted to get the quality right.” It soon became clear, however, that offering a single product could be an advantage for the young company: a way to distinguish themselves from the competition. “We had a marketing guy come to us and say, ‘Not only does it make sense for you guys practically to make only the one product, it’s surprising to consumers, and you can turn that into a message: We do one thing, and we do it very, very well,’ ” recalls Taylor.

It’s been a successful strategy for the brewery, which has collected various accolades over the years, including a silver in the Bohemian Pilsner category at the 2016 Ontario Brewing Awards. “Some people might say, ‘Oh well, it’s just a pilsner,’ ” says Beaumont. “That overlooks the fact that it is a very good beer, and that there’s a big market for people who want to drink something other than Molson or Labatt beer but don’t necessarily want to jump into an IPA.”

For years the company only sold its products in Ontario, but it slowly started to push outwards in 2003, when it began to distribute in Alberta. Five years later, they successfully moved into B.C. Taylor believes in grassroots marketing, and the company sends existing staff to new provinces to win over new customers, instead of hiring new talent. “One of the things we’ve done, which is different than a lot of folks in the industry, is that we’ve only used our own people,” says Taylor. “We only use our own people to make our beer, and we only use our real people to promote it.” Chipper employees drive to music festivals and other events in vintage, bright-green vehicles to hawk their wares. “It’s been very cost-effective for us,” says Taylor. “They’re so well trained in our brand, they live and breathe Steam Whistle—they bleed green, as we like to say—so they really sell our product to a new province in a way that no one else could.”

And Steam Whistle has plenty of workers who live and breathe their jobs—the “Good Beer Folks,” as the company fondly refers to all of its employees. The firm has won awards for its workplace environment, being recognized as one of Canada’s most admired corporate cultures by Waterstone. According to Taylor, it’s something that’s been very deliberately cultivated: “We always knew the quality of what we produced would be determined by how happy our employees were to contribute to it,” he explains. “Cam and I had this idea that people should be happy to come into work Monday morning.”

The co-founders established as flat a hierarchy as they could, with an open-concept office where high-ranking management sit next to new hires. “If you take a tour, you wouldn’t know who’d been there for years and who started two weeks ago,” says Taylor. The company tries to give its younger employees a sense of importance within the organization. It encourages leaders to reach out to their subordinates for feedback. “Management is in servitude more than anything,” says Taylor. “If we get complaints about a manager, that manager has to go to each member of his team and say, ‘Listen, I can’t stay here unless I do a better job of being your manager, so what am I doing wrong?’ ” This kind of environment is empowering to younger staff, he explains. “In many organizations, younger employees feel they won’t be heard until they’re established in their careers. We think that we’re in the business of selling beer to young people, so we should listen to what they have to say.”

Steam Whistle places a large focus on culture fit—to join the ranks of the Good Beer Folks you have to be outgoing, hardworking and concerned about quality. The company focuses heavily on employee referrals and promoting from within to create a like-minded and enthusiastic workforce. Employee retention is high, with many staff hitting their five- and 10-year anniversaries (the company celebrates those milestones with team trips to Munich for Oktoberfest). After a year, staff are able to buy shares in the tightly held company and are included in the profit-share program, where five per cent of pre-tax profits is distributed evenly among the staff. “We want people to feel a sense of ownership,” says Taylor.

It’s that sense of employee ownership that has driven the enduring success of Steam Whistle’s brand. After all, there’s no better salesperson than a happy consumer, so Steam Whistle strives to ensure its employees love the products they make. Even as the company continues to grow and expand into new territory, its founders maintain a focus on staying true to the company’s roots. “On our bottles to this day, you’ll find the ‘Three Fired Guys’ emblem, which is 3FG,” explains Taylor. “It’s important to us to keep the origin story alive. A lot of our success comes from knowing our story, and being able to tell it so well.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/how-steam-whistle-carved-a-niche-for-itself-in-a-crowded-market/feed/1How to properly pour Guinness from a canhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/how-to-properly-pour-guinness-from-a-can/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/how-to-properly-pour-guinness-from-a-can/#commentsFri, 17 Mar 2017 17:55:43 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=993413On St. Patrick's Day, skip the crowds and pour a perfect pint at home. But make sure you get the technique down pat.

So how do you do it? Start with a chilled can and a clean pint glass (bonus points to those with proper Guinness glasses). Open your can on a flat surface, waiting roughly 5 seconds to pour (allowing the nitrogen time to surge into your beer). Now, tilting the glass at a 45 degree angle, begin your pour. When the stout is about 2 inches from the rim, straighten the glass and finish your pour. This will create the famously creamy Guinness head.

The proper pouring technique will help you avoid embarrassment in front of Guinness sticklers. And it’ll help you avoid the fate of Vancouver eatery Railtown Cafe, which published this St. Patrick’s Day promotion that was roundly mocked online:

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/how-to-properly-pour-guinness-from-a-can/feed/1Are we seeing a craft brewery bubble, or just a frothy boom?http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/are-we-seeing-a-craft-brewery-bubble-or-just-a-frothy-boom/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/are-we-seeing-a-craft-brewery-bubble-or-just-a-frothy-boom/#commentsThu, 08 Dec 2016 23:33:03 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=960353The number of craft breweries in Canada has exploded over the past few years, driven in part by government subsidies. Is this a beer bubble about to burst?

At the heart of many of the new craft breweries launching in Canada these days is a familiar entrepreneurial narrative—guys or gals (but mostly guys) in office jobs tire of their drone lifestyles and choose to pursue their love of good beer by going into business for themselves as brewmasters. It’s baked into the business plan at Ottawa’s Broadhead Brewing Company (“Brew beer, sell some, drink some, grow large beards, quit our day jobs”). In Calgary, the founders of Tool Shed Brewing Company tell of quitting their day jobs at an IT company. Likewise, the two founders of Toronto’s Halo Brewery, which launched earlier this year with the tagline “from basement to brewhouse,” both quit their day jobs to start the business. In fact, quitting your job to start a brewery has become such a cliché that it’s even been immortalized in a bank commercial.

So there’s no question a boom is under way. Back in 2010, there were 310 licensed breweries across Canada, according to Beer Canada, but by 2015 that number had more than doubled to 640. (Tap or hover over the chart to see detailed figures.)

Politicians are keen to get in on the action, too. In Ontario, where the number of breweries has nearly tripled in six years, the provincial government this year invested $1.6 million for 20 craft breweries for everything from capital to marketing. The announcement in mid-June coincided with “craft beer week.” Around the same time, B.C. announced $10 million in support to breweries there through a 25 per cent reduction in the provincial liquor distribution board’s mark-up for local beers, while a new grant program in Alberta aims to inject $20 million into the craft beer sector, in the name of diversifying the economy. And that’s just in the past year—government support for craft breweries has been steadily rising over the last decade.

Yet despite the meteoric growth in the number of breweries across the country, each competing for space on chalkboard menus at bars and fridge space at the beer store, the actual volume of Canadian-made beer being consumed in the country fell by 3.4 per cent from 2010 to 2015—the equivalent of around 10 million two-fours.

“There’s only so much beer the market can absorb,” says Jordan St. John, a beer historian and co-author of the Ontario Craft Beer Guide. “I think we’re reaching a tipping point.”

Is the microbrewery bubble about to burst? There’s certainly anecdotal evidence that some breweries that have entered the frothy market have struggled to make a successful business out of it.

In Hamilton, the Ontario Breweries award-winning craft brewery Garden Brewers, which launched in 2014, announced in a July blog post that is couldn’t afford to go on. The Hog’s Head Brewing Company in St. Albert, Alta., reportedly shut down in the summer of 2015 after just three years of operation. And in Squamish, B.C., the One Duck Brewing Company, which garnered more than $16,000 from a Kickstarter campaign in the summer of 2015, announced in an October Facebook post they were going to have to close up shop and file for bankruptcy, not even having made it to the grand opening.

But the rest of the breweries must be finding a home for their suds to stay afloat. At least that’s the assumption of Pedro Antunes, deputy chief economist at the Conference Board. “If they’re not selling, they’ll be out of business pretty quickly,” he says. “[Beer] isn’t like oil. You can’t just store it away in barrels and hope for a better day.”

So if beer lovers are thinking of joining the microbrewery world, without running fellow small-time brewers out of business, it’ll have to come at a cost of the major players. “There may be one big brewery closing and that allows for several small breweries to take that space,” Antunes says.

But the big brewers aren’t closing up shop just yet. The number of licensed brewers who produce more than 7.5 million litres a year has increased from 20 to 30 since 2010, according to Beer Canada’s 2015 industry trends report. There’s also growth in the number of brewers who produce anywhere from 2,000 to 50,000 hectolitres. Meanwhile, the biggest increase is for the smallest of microbreweries—those producing less than 2,000 hectolitres a year (or less than 25,000 cases of 24)—which jumped from 220 to 490 since 2010.

The other possible way for everyone to stay afloat is for beer drinkers to simply pay more—and indeed sales have risen nationally even as the volume of beer sold has declined.

The question becomes, is there enough room to keep hiking prices for even more new breweries to enter the market, let alone to keep the lights on at all those struggling to get established?

At this point, St. John predicts the number of breweries in Canada is reaching a cap as opposed to a bubble, in which when one microbrewery goes under, another one will emerge to take its place. “They’re never going to expand a huge amount but they’ll make somebody’s living,” he says. “And it’s pretty good living if you don’t mind aiming small.”

Canadian MPs get a pretty lengthy summer break and while most spend it in their constituencies, Rona Ambrose has found a way to spend hers like most vacationing Canucks: with a beer in hand. The interim Conservative leader has been spotted clutching a brewski everywhere from Stack Brewing in Sudbury to Walkerville Brewery in Windsor. Why is Ambrose all up in the suds this summer? Chatelaine gave her a call to find out.

Your social media feeds have been packed with photos of you hanging out at Canadian craft breweries this summer. What’s that all about?

We have this campaign we’re running called Free the Beer, which has a fun side and a serious side. The fun side is [the Conservative party] is promoting craft breweries, which have become really trendy for good reason. These are people in our own communities who have decided to invest their own money, start their own craft brewery and make great home-grown brew in their neighbourhoods. Now the serious side is these are small business owners who, because of outdated trade laws, can’t actually sell their product to other Canadians across the country; they can only sell in their own province.

Right. It’s about free trade and it’s about consumer’s choice; it’s about jobs and it’s about small businesses. That’s the serious side. But we thought we’d try to make it fun to just highlight the ridiculousness of these trade barriers, so we started Free the Beer. We even created some swag.

Got any koozies?

Yep. We’ve got beer koozies, we’ve got coasters.

Rona Ambrose visits an Ontario brewery as part of the Free the Beer campaign. (Photograph by Brad Davey)

Are you a beer drinker yourself?

Well, I enjoy tasting it. But I’m not a drinker, period. With my schedule, I don’t really have time.

But if we went to a bar, what would you order?

I typically have a martini. But while I’d never actually order a beer, these craft breweries have all these cool flavours. We went to one in Erieau, Ont. called Bayside Brewing Co. and they make this Wild Cherry Lager. I could have drank that all afternoon.

So you’d go for a radler, that German-style beer cut with grapefruit juice?

Yes! I think I’m a girly beer drinker — I like the fruity ones. And the radler has lower alcohol.

Bar or patio?

Patio, always.

Pretzels or chips?

Chips.

Shotgun or funnel?

Oh my god! Shotgun.

Can or bottle?

Bottle.

And how’s your beer-pong game?

Are you kidding me? My beer pong game is AMAZING. We had a huge beer-pong tournament at Stornoway [in May] for the university campus clubs, and they were all in their little suits and stuff. We were like, “Take off your ties! Relax!” We set up this huge beer-pong table in the kitchen and there must have been 60 people shoved in there. I kicked BUTT. I crushed them, those poor kids. They were like, “How are you so good at beer pong?”

Nowadays “Muddy York” may be more aptly called “Sudsy York.” Over the past two years, an explosion of new breweries and brewpubs in Toronto has earned the city a reputation as a destination for beer enthusiasts.

Often named after the communities in which they are located, these microbreweries place craft beer at the heart of spirited neighbourhood gatherings and fuel hyper-local economies, according to local business owners.

Travel to Bellwoods Brewery on a Saturday for instance and you’ll see people spilling off the string-lit patio or lined up at the adjacent shop to buy bottles of Roman Candle IPA and Wolf Wizard pale ale. Located on downtown’s uber trendy Ossington Avenue, Bellwoods caters to everyone from tattooed hipsters to young parents with strollers in tow.

Luke Pestl, brew master and co-owner at Bellwoods, says location has been crucial to the success of the venture. “This is a vibrant neighbourhood and people like buying things and supporting small stores. People know you by name. It’s a social thing [and the brewery] becomes a vibrant hub.”

As recently as four years ago, Pestl and fellow beer lovers drove across the border to Buffalo to sample new and interesting brews. Now they can tap into an ever-growing list of local breweries producing seasonal lagers, ales, pilsners and more with names like Cocoa Woman, Paradise Lost and Belgian Farmhouse Stout.

The Ontario Beverage Network lists 28 breweries currently operating in the city, among them Bellwoods Brewery, Junction Craft Brewing and Lansdowne Brewery. Ten have opened since 2015 and another 21 are in development.

Award-winning Ontario beer blogger Ben Johnson says growing demand for craft beer is a natural extension of the “good food” movement where aficionados embrace fresh, local and small-batch creations. He adds that as people sample micro beers and understand beer can be more varied, interesting and less bland, they quickly turn to craft brews.

“For a long time our notion of beer was industrial lagers, big companies had a stranglehold on the marketplace,” says Johnson. “People are starting to understand that beer can be pretty versatile [and those] who said I’m not a beer person, discovered they weren’t trying the right beers.”

In the 80s, Canada had 10 breweries and the big three–Molson, Labatt and Carling O’Keefe–supplied 96% of the nation’s (mostly lager) beer. That stranglehold inspired a small number of brew masters to start brewing styles of beer—Belgium wheat beers, stouts, pale ales–that had disappeared years earlier.

Greg Taylor and Cam Heaps, who founded Steam Whistle Brewing in Toronto in 2000, note that the recent popularity of craft breweries represents a return to beer’s roots.

“Historically a brewery was a local thing, because beer is best drank in its freshest state,” says Heaps. “What we’ve learned over the past years about craft brewing and brewing in general,” adds Taylor, “is breweries really need to have a place [where] consumer can learn the magic of craft beer.”

And if you can produce a good beer, there is money to be made. Brewers typically charge from $7 to $13 for a 500-ml bottle of beer. Bellwoods, for instance, produces about 6,000 500-ml bottles weekly at their brewpub. Space is so tight that Bellwoods temporarily moves the kitchen serving the brewpub to bottle beer. Demand is so high Pestl worries they will have to close the pub on days following busy summer weekends because they’ve run out of beer.

It’s no wonder Pestl and partners have two new facilities in the works. A production brewery with bottle shop is slated to open this July in the north end of the city, while a larger, midtown brewpub and events space is expected to open in 2017. Since January, Radical Road Brewing Co., Sextant Craft Brewery, Muddy York Brewing, Folly Brewpub and Shacklands Brewing all announced new ventures as well.

Ontario Craft Brewers estimate sales for the sector at $240 million in 2015, up 20% from the previous year, and pegs the overall economic impact of the province’s nearly 200 small brewers at $600 million annually. More than 1,500 workers are employed by the industry and estimates of craft beer’s total market share range between 6% and 10%.

While craft beer still represents a tiny slice of overall beer sales in the country that hover around $9 billion annually, the City of Toronto believes in the sector enough that in 2015 they passed a proposal to work with small-scale craft breweries, craft beer bars and restaurants to grow the sector and develop a Craft Brewery Culinary Trail. The provincial government meanwhile announced a two-year, $1.4-million Microbrewery Strategy in their February budget to assist with marketing, training and tourism opportunities.

“I think of places like Left Field Brewery [in Toronto’s East end] where people come with strollers and kids and they hang out for the day, spend some money and watch a baseball game,” says Johnson. “Once you’ve had that vibe and understood the beer can be like that, it’s tough to go back to buying a 2-4 at The Beer Store.”

Beer is shown on shelves at a grocery store in Toronto. (Nathan Denette/CP)

Gary McMullen has been brewing beer for over 20 years. His story isn’t so different from hundreds of other craft brewers: it began as a hobby, probably in his basement or garage, and grew, with the help of a close friend, to what Ontarians know today as Muskoka Brewery—Ontarians, because Canadians outside of Ontario have likely never heard of this brand.

“There’s 10, 11 jurisdictions you need to deal with if you want to be a national brand in Canada,” he says, “and you move south into the United States, you go into New York state, and find the same number of people essentially.” Which is what the brewery has done. Muskoka brew is now selling on a pilot base south of the border, and McMullen said so far, it’s been successful.

Every year, Muskoka brews upwards of 50,000 hectolitres of beer—that’s over 8.3 million pints. But less than four per cent of that is sold outside of Ontario’s borders—a number McMullen says could increase if the company was able to move more seamlessly across provincial borders. Standing in his way are thousands upon thousands of complex rules and regulations that vary from province to province to territory.

University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe says it’s impossible to approach this problem with an itemized list that you tackle one at a time. “It needs to be approached in a system-wide way; in a macro way,” he says.

In 2015, Tombe co-authored a study that looked at how much money Canada is losing in gross domestic product by having these internal trade barriers, and found it could be anywhere between $50 billion and $130 billion—a number cited in a report released by the Senate earlier this month. The report, “Tear Down These Walls,” makes a case for mutual recognition between provinces, saying the artificial walls that exist are an affront to the fundamental rights of Canadians. The Senate is giving the feds until Canada’s birthday, July 1, 2017, to reach an agreement with the provincial and territorial governments, and if that doesn’t happen, will refer the case to the Supreme Court.

But in that time, Tombe asks, “How many small businesses are prevented from growing their operations because of these internal trade costs?”

Last year, Muskoka pulled its products out of B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan, after the New West Partnership Trade Agreement raised the taxes on out-of-province brewers, making it unaffordable for the Ontario-based company to keep up its delivery out west. That agreement is cited in the Senate report as a possible model to base a renewed Agreement on Internal Trade on.

Despite living a few thousand kilometres apart, McMullen’s struggles aren’t so different from Alley Kat Brewing Company’s Neil Herbst. Alley Kat, an Edmonton-based brand, has been operating since 1994, and Herbst says Alberta has been great to him. But trying to grow within Canada, outside provincial lines, has been impossible, and it’s not for lack of trying.

“The issue has been essentially listings,” he says, adding that getting into the U.S. was a matter of meeting label requirements and registering the brewery—something that took him a day to work out.

Herbst is for the NWPTA, because if he can’t sell his product in Ontario, why should an Ontario company be able to sell its product in Alberta? “B.C. is as big of a problem as Ontario,” he says, despite B.C. being part of the NWPTA. “They control listings as well, but you’ll see tons and tons and tons of B.C. beer in Alberta.”

Like McMullen, Herbst’s wildly successful hobby-turned-career has been capped.

“I just find it bizarre that we have a country that limits trade across provincial borders,” Herbst says. “It’s not even really a country, it’s a bunch of little fiefdoms.”

Beer is an easy good to focus this discussion around, because it’s beer, and everyone (over the legal drinking age) loves beer. But if you want to deregulate the provincial trade of beer, you also have to deregulate finance, energy, carbon emission standards, labour—the list goes on.

At the beginning of June, Okanagan-area MP Dan Albas launched a “Free the Beer” campaign in response to a groundbreaking court ruling in New Brunswick. Gerard Comeau was charged in 2012 after police caught him bringing 14 cases of beer and three bottles of liquor into New Brunswick from a Quebec border town. This spring, a judge threw out his charges, saying the ban on cross-border transport was unconstitutional. The Province of New Brunswick has appealed that decision, but Albas would like to see it go one step further. Earlier this week he tabled a motion calling for the federal government to bypass the Provincial Appeals Court and refer Comeau’s case to the Supreme Court. His motion was shot down.

In May, Canada’s minister of economic development applauded the New Brunswick judge’s decision. But on Tuesday, Navdeep Bains said that while he agrees internal trade needs to improve, Albas’ plan threatens the work being done with provincial and territorial governments. “Imagine this scenario,” he said. “I am at the table working with my counterparts and then we launch this through the courts. What kind of signal does that send? We are working in good faith.”

Tombe says the solution should be simple: “If something’s good enough in one province, it should be good enough in the rest.”

In a ruling announced Tuesday, the federal agency said the proposed acquisition of SABMiller by Labatt parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev and related divestiture of Miller brands to Molson Coors will not lessen or prevent competition in Canada.

The US$107-billion global deal announced in November will see Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch acquiring Foster’s Lager and Castle brands in Canada.

Overall, it will give the company control over 31 per cent of the global beer market.

Molson Coors, meanwhile, is poised to nearly double its size after agreeing to spend US$12 billion for SABMiller’s share of U.S. joint venture Miller Coors and Miller’s International brands, including those sold in Canada such as Miller Genuine Draft and Miller Lite.

The European Union’s regulator has already given its go-ahead for the deal.

]]>A toast to Canadian history, freer trade and cheaper beerhttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/a-toast-to-canadian-history-freer-trade-and-cheaper-beer/
Wed, 04 May 2016 11:54:24 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=867747What the Fathers of Confederation thought, said and did 150 years ago still matters—as it should. Let’s drink to that.

The price of beer is a topic of reliable interest across Canada. The Fathers of Confederation? Mmm, not so much. Last week, however, a provincial court case brought these two disparate topics together in a way that promises tremendous benefits for all Canadians. The ruling reveals quite clearly how—despite the hostility, ignorance and apathy shown to them lately—this country’s major historical figures still have much to say that is significant to Canada in 2016.

Especially when it comes to beer.

In 2012, Gérald Comeau of Tracadie, N.B. crossed over to Pointe-à-la-Croix, Que. and bought 16 cases of beer and three bottles of liquor from a convenience store at substantial savings from the prices charged back home at the monopolistic New Brunswick liquor board. Returning to New Brunswick, however, Comeau was stopped by the RCMP, his booze was seized and he was handed a $292 fine for buying alcohol out of province. The Canadian Constitution Foundation subsequently took up his cause. This past Friday, Judge Ronald LeBlanc of the New Brunswick Provincial Court tossed out Comeau’s fine and ruled the provincial law forbidding New Brunswickers from buying beer and liquor in Quebec to be unconstitutional.

LeBlanc’s ruling is obviously good news for anyone interested in saving money or sampling the wares of vintners, distillers and brewers from other provinces. The myriad ways in which the provinces frustrate the movement of alcohol, as well as other goods and services—everything from milk and eggs to oil sands pipelines—across internal borders is a grave embarrassment to us all. It’s often observed that Canadians enjoy freer trade with other countries than they do between provinces. Yet as significant as this ruling may be—given its implication for farm-marketing boards, it will likely find its way to the Supreme Court—how the judge came to his decision is equally worthy of attention. LeBlanc sought advice from the founders of Canada.

Canada’s Constitution, originally drafted between 1864 and 1867 by three dozen men now referred to as the Fathers of Confederation, sets out in section 121 that “all articles of the growth, produce or manufacture of any of the provinces shall . . . be admitted free into each of the other provinces.” The constitutionality of Comeau’s beer run turns on what’s meant by “admitted free.” Keen to protect their liquor-retailing monopolies and other protectionist policies, many provinces have argued over the past century that section 121 merely prohibits the imposition of tariffs and border guards at provincial boundaries; non-tariff barriers, including fines for cross-border booze shopping, are thus perfectly constitutional. LeBlanc ruled against this restrictive, if familiar, view of Canada’s economic union.

In coming to his decision, the judge went back to first principles. He took a close look at colonial Canada during the lead-up to Confederation, including the role of free trade with the United States during the 1850s, the impact of the U.S. Civil War and the aims of the Fathers of Confederation in pulling three British North American colonies together into one entity. LeBlanc studied speeches and various drafts of important documents to understand the sort of country they intended to create. “The strong and harmonious economic union envisaged by our Fathers of Confederation had to have been based on free trade, not on punishing internal non-tariff trade barriers,” he concluded. What the Fathers of Confederation thought, said and did 150 years ago still matters. As it should.

It has become depressingly commonplace for Canadians to either disparage or ignore our country’s historical ﬁgures. Recent opposition to installing statues commemorating Canada’s prime ministers in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., for example, or calls to remove an existing statue of British colonial figure Edward Cornwallis in Halifax, reveal a deliberate animosity toward our collective past. Such feelings are apparently motivated by an unspoken belief that modern Canada only sprang into existence with the passage of the Canada Health Act, or perhaps the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; anything previous is an embarrassment to our modern selves.

These efforts are expunging historical Canada are not only unfair, but demonstrably untrue, as the New Brunswick beer ruling demonstrates. The views of Canada’s historical figures still have the power to affect us today, despite whatever the status quo may say. The same might also be said about the Bank of Canada’s recent release of a list of 12 women under consideration for portraits on a new series of Canadian banknotes—we should welcome all efforts at understanding the people who created this country.

We should never forget our history, or ignore its wisdom. If that means freer trade and cheaper beer, so much the better.

Summer is finally here, which is great, because it’s definitely one of my four favourite seasons for drinking beer. But which brew to choose?

In accordance with my sworn duty to serve readers—which dates back all the way to last Wednesday, when I was brainstorming ways to trick Maclean’s into picking up my booze tab—I selflessly taste-tested an armload of bottles and cans that were described by Beer Store employees as “hot right now.” Let the column of three separate hangovers begin!

Coors Altitude. I don’t know how long it took them. I don’t know how they pulled it off. But, doggone it, the scientists at Coors managed to create the perfect beer for those who crave the taste of a mouthful of wet nickels. Seriously, I got through about half a bottle and actually thought to myself, “Maybe I’ll just stay sober instead.” I don’t ever want to feel that way again.

That said, in the interest of professional dedication and amateur masochism, I decided to check whether a Coors Altitude is superior to a Coors Light. Verdict: It barely is! Let us therefore officially add Altitude to the roster of Things that Taste Better than a Coors Light, taking its place alongside expired milk, chicken juices and a glass of lukewarm water poured through a hobo’s underpants.

Bud Light Apple. When you make a beer as bland as Bud Light, it’s natural to want to punch up the taste with an array of powerful flavours. Lime. Raspberry. Probably salmon, one day soon.

But I like apple-flavoured stuff, so I was game for this one. I cracked a can and took a sip. I waited, then waited some more. Even five minutes later, it was as though my taste buds were still being felt up by a horny McIntosh. According to the brewmaster, Bud Light Apple leaves a “verdant” aftertaste, which suggests I have been using the word verdant all wrong. I had no idea it meant “like if a Jolly Rancher had sex with a Jelly Belly.”

Sleeman Lift. This new light lager is being marketed at “performance-focused” beer drinkers, which I incorrectly assumed to mean people who, like me, consume beer at an elite level. Nope. Turns out they’re targeting the annoying athletic-type person who parkours her way through the beer store before kite-surfing home with a six-pack under one arm and, under the other, a bear in a headlock. Whereas I tripped over a curb on my way in from the parking lot.

What exactly makes this beer for the “performance-focused?” Beats me. One of the supposed selling points is that Lift is made with “a hint of coconut water,” presumably because someone at Sleeman read in USA Today that that’s a thing now. Think of it this way: If a whole lot of coconut water confers negligible health benefits, imagine what a “hint” of coconut water will do for you! All in all, it’s a pretty decent light beer, which is to say a pretty lousy actual beer.

Bud Light Lime Straw-ber-rita. From the people who brought you Bud Light Lime, and the ensuing hours of nightmarish regret, comes this combination of strong beer and “margarita flavour.” How does it taste? Imagine if a red Mr. Freeze walked in on Mrs. Freeze cheating on him, then got stinking drunk on Bud Light and left himself out to melt overnight. But don’t let me bias you against this novelty beverage. Some people apparently love it. It’s the perfect choice for a steamy summer day when you’re sitting out on the deck and want to enjoy the liquid equivalent of a suicide note.

Molson Canadian 67. Molson boasts that this beer is “specially brewed for Canadian beer tastes.” I’m not sure what that means—that it comes in liquid form? As a nation, we never did take a shine to Labatt Aerosol. Canadian 67 has fewer calories than most light beers, which is great, except for one thing: turns out that calories are what make a beer taste good. Hooray for delicious calories! Here’s how I’d describe the experience of drinking a 67: It’s as though someone once tried a beer and then, several years later, attempted to recreate the taste using bathtub water and a photograph of a field of barley. Basically, it tastes like disappointment.

Nevertheless, Molson is putting a lot of money into marketing 67 this year. But you’ve got to give them credit; at least the slogan is refreshingly honest: “More of what you want and less of what you don’t.” In this case, what you apparently don’t want is a beer.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/youre-welcome-scott-feschuk-reviews-summer-beers/feed/3What it feels like to can beer at an Ontario craft brewerhttp://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-can-beer-at-an-ontario-craft-brewer/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-can-beer-at-an-ontario-craft-brewer/#respondWed, 10 Jun 2015 20:28:33 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=738455Go behind the scenes at Toronto’s Left Field Brewery to see how their craft beer gets canned. You’ll get thirsty just watching those Ontario-made ales shuttle along the assembly line.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/what-it-feels-like-to-can-beer-at-an-ontario-craft-brewer/feed/0Newsmaker of the Day: Tony Abbott—and beerhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/newsmaker-of-the-day-tony-abbott-and-beer/
Tue, 21 Apr 2015 22:29:15 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=709869Gone in six seconds. The Australian PM can sure down a beer.

Like most Australians, Tony Abbott “enjoys a drink on social occasions.” He wrote exactly that when opening his op-ed piece in the Courier Mail last year. “However,” the Australian prime minister continued, “as a father and as a citizen, I’m appalled by the violent binge-drinking culture that now seems so prevalent, especially at ‘hot spots’ in our big cities.”

Perhaps there was a hint of hypocrisy this weekend then when Abbott downed an entire beer in six seconds as a university Aussie Rules football team chanted “skol, skol,” the Australian equivalent to “chug, chug.”

The team invited the PM over for a beer and nothing more, one of the coaches told Australian Women’s Weekly, but Abbott decided to give a speech. “Then he proceeds to reach down and grab a schooner [a glass that isn’t quite as big as a pint] and he drank from head-to-toe the entire schooner, dribbling little bits on his shirt … and then tipped it upside down on his head,” the coach said. “[Abbott] was proud as punch.”

A video of the boisterous accomplishment quickly made the rounds on social media. Some were impressed by his technique, while others figured it might set a bad example. Regardless, he still needs a bit of practice before he can put himself in the same category as his countryman Bob Hawke. Legend has it, Hawke chugged two and a half pints of beer in 11 seconds during his college days in the 1950s and later became prime minister. (Hawke doesn’t shy away in his later years when someone offers him a beer, saying, “One for the country.”)

“I’m just pleased that Tony Abbott’s learning to drink beer without adding lemonade,” said Bill Shorten, leader of the Australian opposition, perhaps referencing the 2010 campaign when Abbott’s choice of drinking a shandy—a mixture of beer and lemonade—created a bit of teasing toward his macho persona.

Six seconds in a Sydney pub last weekend should put an end to that. Next up, let’s see if Stephen Harper (and other world leaders past and present) can better that time.

]]>Ontario will hike beer tax, sell majority of Hydro Onehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-will-hike-beer-tax-sell-majority-of-hydro-one-to-fund-infrastructure/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ontario-will-hike-beer-tax-sell-majority-of-hydro-one-to-fund-infrastructure/#commentsThu, 16 Apr 2015 21:50:37 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=708165'When it comes to the sale of beer in Ontario, I'm here to announce that the status quo is over and that the days of monopoly are done'

]]>TORONTO – Ontario’s “biggest shakeup” to its liquor laws since it repealed prohibition in 1927 includes a new tax on beer and allowing it to be sold in hundreds of grocery stores, Premier Kathleen Wynne said Thursday.

“When it comes to the sale of beer in Ontario, I’m here to announce that the status quo is over and that the days of monopoly are done,” Wynne said as she released a report by a panel appointed to look at liquor sales and Crown assets.

The new tax — $1 on a case of 24 — will be phased in over four years starting Nov. 1 at 25 cents a case, which is expected to raise $100 million annually by 2019.

The government’s revised agreement with the foreign-owned Beer Store — which has 80 per cent of beer sales in Ontario — includes a pledge by major brewers to cap prices on their most popular brands, which represent about 50 per cent of the market, until May 2017.

“One thing we do not want to see changed is our commitment to affordable prices,” said Wynne.

Ontario will also allow beer to be sold in 450 grocery stores, and will start a pilot project to sell 12-packs of beer in Liquor Control Board stores.

The agreement also makes it easier, and less expensive, for small brewers to list their products in the Beer Store’s 447 retail outlets, and will increase shelf space for the small companies from four per cent to 20 per cent. That should create jobs as the smaller brewers grow sales and expand their work forces.

“The changes should lead to significant job creation here in the province in domestic craft brewing,” said Cam Heaps of Steam Whistle Brewing, who is also chair of Ontario Craft Brewers.

“We as a sector have doubled in the last 10 years, and I imagine it would double or triple again in the next five to 10 years.”

The new deal will also allow bars and restaurants that buy up to 250 of cases of beer to purchase it at the same price as consumers after years of being charged up to 50 per cent more than retail. Restaurants Canada called it “a good first step” for about 9,000 small licensees, but said large bars will still pay above retail prices.

“Today’s announcement doesn’t help the bars and pubs that sell high volumes of beer and are currently being gouged on price,” said spokesman James Rilett.

The Progressive Conservatives said the beer tax was proof the Liberals’ intentions were not all about improving consumer access, calling it “a cash grab.”

Modernizing beer sales was recommended by a panel headed by former TD Bank CEO Ed Clark, which examined Crown assets such as the LCBO, Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation to find ways to squeeze out the maximum value to help fund the Liberals’ infrastructure plans.

Wynne said the government will sell 60 per cent of Hydro One, but not allow any one shareholder to buy more than 10 per cent while the province remains the controlling owner with 40 per cent of the utility.

Clark said the province could generate about $9 billion from the Hydro One sale, with $5 billion going to pay the utility’s debt and $4 billion to fund infrastructure projects. He predicted electricity rates could go down with private-sector discipline and more capital investment in Hydro One.

“We believe that there will be a favourable impact on hydro rates over time,” he said.

“People are maybe going to have easier access to beer,” said Horwath, “but they’re not going to be able to keep their beer cold because they won’t be able to keep their fridge plugged in because they won’t be able to afford hydro.”

Wynne said she could not guarantee electricity rates would not go up as a result of the Hydro One sale.

The Conservatives said they don’t trust the Liberals to put the money from the sale to hydro’d debt and new infrastructure, and fear they will use it to reduce the $10.9-billion budget shortfall.

“This is all about trying to pay off their deficit,” insisted Fedeli.

A Hydro One distribution company, Hydro One Brampton, will be merged with Enersource, PowerStream and Horizon Utilities to create the province’s second-largest local distribution company.

The Electricity Distributors Association, representing local distribution utilities, welcomed the merger announcement and called on the government to ensure that other local utilities have the same latitude to buy Hydro One distribution assets.

]]>LUCKNOW, India – A bad batch of bootleg liquor killed at least 28 people and sent 160 others to hospitals in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, officials said Tuesday.

Many of the victims were among more than 200 people who had gathered to watch a cricket match Sunday evening in a village about 30 kilometres (almost 20 miles) southwest of the state capital, Lucknow, government official Anil Garg said.

By midday Tuesday, 28 people had died, including 11 in another village farther southwest, police officer Mukul Goel said.

Doctors in Lucknow said that some of those hospitalized were in serious condition and relying on artificial ventilation, and that some had lost their eyesight.

Police arrested the shop owner who sold the 200-millilitre pouches of the homemade alcohol for about 30 cents each. A raid of the shop uncovered large containers of chemicals, which have been sent to a laboratory for testing, district official R.K. Pandey said.

“The symptoms gave a clear indication that these patients were served methyl alcohol,” which despite being toxic is sometimes mixed with ethyl alcohol to make a brew cheaper, said Dr. Kausar Usman, head of the trauma centre at Lucknow’s King George’s Medical College.

Deaths from drinking illegally brewed alcohol are common in India because the poor cannot afford licensed liquor.

Villager Rajesh Kumar, whose two older brothers became ill after drinking the unlicensed liquor on Monday, said the shop in Datli village was well known for selling inexpensive liquor, and that many men came from surrounding villages just to buy the booze.

The state’s highest elected official, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, suspended six police officers suspected of taking bribes to ignore complaints against the shop and its alcohol and announced that a “drive will be launched against those involved in the illicit liquor trade.”

This weekend, at the Evergreen Brickworks in Toronto, six to seven thousand punters will brave the cool weather to drink a kind of ale that goes back to the Iron Age. Some 316 barrels, each containing a different brew, will be tapped in celebration of what Cask Days organizer Tomas Morana calls “the rawest way to serve beer.” In Canada, it also happens to be the trendiest.

Cask ale—unfiltered, unpasteurized, and still fermenting in the vessel from which it’s poured—was virtually unknown here 10 years ago, when the first Cask Days festival was held; now, it’s popping up at bars from Charlottetown to Squamish, B.C. Morana says it “appeals to many different demographics” because in comparison to its kegged counterpart, “it’s not carbonated, and it’s easier on the stomach. The mouth feel, texture, and overall chewiness are more [pronounced], but also, it doesn’t give you that bloated feeling.” Ask a cask ale purist about keg beer, and you’re likely to get a curl of the lip.

The rise of cask ale in Canada owes a lot to Britain’s Campaign for Real Ale (or CAMRA), which was founded in 1971 to save what its members call the only “real ale” from extinction as U.K. pubs became overrun by bland, fizzy, conglomerate keg beer. CAMRA is now Europe’s largest single-issue advocacy group, and its annual Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) attracts nearly 50,000 people. The festival does permit some kegs, but only from countries like Germany and the Czech Republic, where it’s “traditional.”

In snubbing local kegs, however, British traditionalists may have thrown out the baby with the bad lager, and created an image problem for their beloved cask ale. Although CAMRA stresses the development of flavour as beer ferments in casks, some styles of beer may be better suited to kegs. “An India Pale Ale actually shows better on tap with carbonation,” admits Morana. Indeed, British cask producers have tended to default to fairly staid, low-alcohol brownish ales. London’s current brewery boom (there are now 62, an increase of nearly 50 in four years) is dominated by outfits bent on breaking out of this fusty mould, and proving kegged beer needn’t be insipid swill. They’ve imported the U.S. term “craft beer”—as applied to small-batch kegs. And like their American counterparts, they’re reaching young people for whom tradition takes a back seat to adventure.

British cask culture, says London-based marketing consultant Greg Wells, is typified by “old guys with their Pink Floyd and comedy Lord of the Rings T-shirts, and the special [ale] on the hand pump with some quip about the Old World or something naughty.” The GBBF, he says, is “fun; it’s very male-oriented, and, to be honest, it sits in contradiction to every other design and [event] you’re going to” in 2014. Wells co-founded the London Craft Beer Festival last year as a keg-friendly, hipper alternative. CAMRA spokesman Neil Walker counters that the number of female members in the group has “shot up over the last couple of years” and acknowledges the need to appeal to a new generation.

Of course, North America is still in the early days of its infatuation with cask ale. Morana, who sells cask equipment to bars across Canada, says he has noticed “a lot more younger people are starting to enjoy cask beer, and are ordering it without requiring any sort of explanation from bartenders.” This year’s Cask Days is bringing in some of the most lauded brewers from California, such as Stone and Pizza Port; they’ll put their own spin on the cask tradition, offering beers with ingredients such as kaffir lime, calamansi and insanely hot scorpion peppers.

There will be U.K. brewers too, their casks shipped in across the Atlantic. In Britain, there are signs of a détente: some hop-mad craft brewers are experimenting with casks and vice-versa. Paddy Johnson, the brewmaster at cask-oriented brewery Windsor & Eton, and spokesman for the London Brewers Alliance, has this year made cask ales with jasmine petals, coriander, cardamom and guava. He’s now brewing kegged beer, too. “I see hardened old CAMRA drinkers opening cans of blooming craft beer and saying, ‘Well, I thought I’d never drink from a can, but this is really nice.’”

]]>10 of the gold-medal-winning beers at the World Beer Cuphttp://www.macleans.ca/society/10-of-the-gold-medal-winning-beers-at-the-world-beer-cup/
Wed, 27 Aug 2014 14:01:10 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=585895Bottoms up! More proof Canadian beer is the best.

]]>Craft breweries bubble up all over Chinahttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/craft-breweries-bubble-up-all-over-china/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/craft-breweries-bubble-up-all-over-china/#commentsSat, 05 Jul 2014 15:17:02 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=576307Unique beers like Airpocalypse IPA are on tap in the world’s biggest, and most polluted, beer market

Smog may be stifling Beijing’s image, but Kristian Li wants to turn that infamous haze into a marketing hook. The Toronto-born brewer, who has sold his Jing-A craft beers (with cofounder Alex Acker) in China’s capital since 2013, is pouring out a murky concoction that cheekily reminds Beijingers of their city’s dismal pollution. Li and Acker dubbed it the Airpocalypse IPA and, upon its recent debut, they announced a temporary discount that would coincide with the city’s air quality index. If pollution reached a level of 500 or more on that scale, then the suds would be given away for free—a fitting deal, considering the brew’s equally hazy flavour, which Li and Acker attained by leaving the batch completely unfiltered.

The campaign went viral on social networks and in the international media. But the Jing-A duo say they’ve had even greater success with tapping into more positive aspects of Chinese culture. Unlike many local breweries that work to recreate the types of lagers expats are homesick for, Li and Acker brew distinctly local flavours, in the hopes of dipping into the deeper Chinese market.

“China is the biggest producer and consumer of beer in the world,” Li says, pointing out that the Middle Kingdom brewed 50 billion litres in 2012 alone, and that beer is China’s second-most consumed beverage, after tea. Mintel, a market research firm, says the nation’s beer market grew by 29 per cent since 2007, and that its overall value rose by 63 per cent in the same period, to [the equivalent of] $78 billion. Of course, those figures were dominated by huge corporate beer brands like Tsingtao and Yanjing. “If we can get just two to three per cent of that clientele drinking craft beer,” Li says, “it’s a pretty lucrative opportunity .”

Li and Acker, who previously worked in Beijing’s telecom industry (the former at Microsoft and the latter at Apple), hope to whet those appetites with flavours such as Jing-A’s Toasted Chestnut Brown Ale, for instance, brewed with the bite-sized nuts that are one of Beijing’s distinctive snacks. Their Full Moon Farmhouse Ale is infused with the sweet gui hua flower used to flavour some of the nation’s most popular teas. Li and Acker drive fresh batches around town in a keg-equipped electric “egg” scooter, a signature Beijing vehicle. “It’s all about using organic local ingredients,” says Acker, who hails from Connecticut. Li says the market is responding. “We started brewing two years ago,” he says, “and now, we’re in Beijing’s top three.”

“I love the unique flavours at these breweries,” says Lolly Fan, a local music promoter, who recently became hooked on craft brews. But she thinks the appeal may be lost on some Chinese customers. After all, this is the nation’s first generation to have easy access to bars, let alone artisanal beer. “Most Chinese people go to bars to watch shows or dance, but in a brewery, you enjoy beers and talk. A lot of customers might wonder why there’s no mojito on the menu.”

Yin Hai, a brewer and owner of Beijing’s NBeer pub, says that bewilderment is understandable, given that the Communist era left China closed off for so long and its radical reforms opened the cultural floodgates so quickly. “Fifteen years ago, when wine just got into China, everyone mixed it with Coca-Cola,” Yin says with a laugh, adding that the Chinese elite are now some of the most seasoned wine importers in the world. (The same happened with coffee.)

A lack of consumer awareness isn’t the only buzz kill for Beijing brewers. Li says general food safety and hygiene concerns, which stem from notorious lapses at Chinese restaurants and grocers, have led to strict bottling regulations. These all but prohibit small operations such as Jing-A from selling their brews on a grander scale. “If we wanted our bottles in grocery stores, we’d need to have a bottling-grade facility,” he says, adding that licences are only granted if the applicant produces a huge minimum quota.

Carl Setzer, owner of Great Leap, the city’s first and biggest craft brewery, which successfully experimented with local ingredients before Jing-A, says he’s not merely frustrated by China’s rigid health regulations—he’s terrified by them. “There’s a very draconian, but very real law here that says if you make a product that kills Chinese people, you get the death penalty,” Setzer says, adding that fear of execution is only one reason he sticks to the rules. He’s also compelled by the idea of credibility. “If we operate in grey areas because it’s China—wink wink, nudge nudge—then we’ll never persuade the higher-ups who want to see effective change in the food and beverage industry.”

Pan Dinghao, owner of Panda Brew Pub, says the fledgling industry has already worked through other challenges. “At first, we had trouble finding quality local malts and hops,” Pan says, but that problem has shrunk, as pro and amateur brewers have coordinated societies, online stores and social media networks to share tips on Beijing’s ingredient options, regulations and other fine points.

Setzer is encouraged by the scene’s overall progress, saying he sold 38,000 pints last month and those totals keep growing. Acker and Li say Jing-A’s sales have quadrupled since last year. The advantages of brewing in Beijing may well trump any setbacks. “I have a lot of friends in Boston, where every neighbourhood has its own craft brewery,” says Acker. In contrast, Li says, Beijing is like a wide-open frontier. “I have a friend back home who opened a brewery in [Toronto’s] Kensington Market,” he says, “and it cost him $1 million to start. In Beijing, you only need a fraction of that; a majority of the equipment used abroad is manufactured here.”

Acker says the low stakes and lack of cutthroat competition encourage Beijing’s craft brewers to collaborate on batches, events and promotions. In fact, the collaborative spirit may almost be a necessity in Beijing. As Acker puts it, “We’re all committed to spreading the gospel of good beer together.”

Reporter’s note: China’s strict health and safety laws (designed to safeguard the public after many recent food and beverage scandals) not only restrict the bottling of small scale craft beer, but also its general distribution. This includes the sale of draft pints at restaurants and bars off-site (doing so could lead to punitive action). So craft breweries in Beijing have had to think of creative ways to grow their businesses while still following the restrictive rules. Great Leap Brewing, for instance, has opened a brewpub restaurant, selling its beer exclusively on-site. Meanwhile, Panda Brew Pub bypasses small scale distribution restrictions by enlisting the help of a major Chinese contract bottling plant. Another Beijing establishment called Slow Boat Brewery now bottles and brews in an American facility, before importing its beer back to China.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/craft-breweries-bubble-up-all-over-china/feed/3Cheers to a book for beer aficionadoshttp://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/cheers-to-a-book-for-craft-beer-aficionados/
Fri, 30 May 2014 18:28:26 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=561635Maclean's reviews The Craft Beer Revolution

]]>THE CRAFT BEER REVOLUTION: HOW A BAND OF MICROBREWERS IS TRANSFORMING THE WORLD’S FAVORITE DRINK

By Steve Hindy

In 2010, when a bill to increase regulation of beer distribution came to Congress, those who supported it sought, Steve Hindy writes, to “cast themselves as the only safeguard against alcohol-inspired anarchy on the streets of the United States.” Ontarians may find this curiously familiar: as the foreign-owned Beer Store clings desperately to its own near-monopoly with fear-mongering ads, it’s worth reading of earlier battles between beer barons and their harried subjects.

Hindy, a co-founder of the Brooklyn Brewery (the 18th-largest seller, by volume, in the U.S.), is particularly well equipped to tell the tale of the American craft beer movement, which from 1965 to 2013 grew from one microbrewery (Anchor, in San Francisco) to 2,594. He’s a former journalist who was inspired by homebrewers while stationed in the Middle East in the ’80s, and he entered the market during that decade’s first-wave craft-beer boom; he knows first-hand the curious tales of craft brewers’ odd career paths, and he knows all of the big players. Not only does he show us how David stunned Goliath and took away some of his market share, but also how David developed growing pains, and realized that at times an uneasy alliance with a chastened Goliath could in fact be beneficial. The revolutionaries, he says, will one day have to put down their “creed” and work together with larger brewers “for the overall health of the beer industry.”

Not everyone agrees with him, and he snipes amusingly at his adversaries—particularly Jim Koch of the Boston Beer Company, whom he paints as an anti-heroic craft-brew pioneer looking to blaze a trail for himself and then set fire to it so no one could follow him—even at his own brewery: “Koch has said he needs no succession plan because he plans to live forever.” Hindy depicts vitriolic, alcohol-fuelled brewers’ meetings—proof that while great ideas are hatched at the pub, the fine print shouldn’t be. Skim through the denser passages (beer-association minutiae may drive you to drink) and the frothy beer-nerd hagiographies of Hindy’s friends, and you’ll find a tale bubbling with conflict about how an industry older than Canada’s own has spread good beer, fought suppressive laws, and come of age. And sorry, Beer Store lobbyists, but SPOILER ALERT: it doesn’t end in alcoholic apocalypse.

]]>Republicans prefer Labatt Blue and Canadian Club whiskyhttp://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/republicans-prefer-labatt-blue-and-canadian-club-whisky/
http://www.macleans.ca/economy/business/republicans-prefer-labatt-blue-and-canadian-club-whisky/#commentsTue, 14 Jan 2014 20:43:48 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=454534Alcohol choice and voting behaviour in the U.S.

]]>Most Canadians wouldn’t associate Labatt Blue with U.S. Republican voters. The iconic Labatt bear, the star in advertisements south of the border, is unabashedly Canadian with the stereotypical accent. And yet, those who pick up a can of Blue, according to a recent study, are not only more likely to vote than someone who drinks Budweiser or Corona, they also more likely to vote Republican.

These proud Canadian brands may be linked historically to the land of universal health care, but when charted alongside 50 major brands of beer, wine, and spirits, and voter registration and turnout history, Canada’s famous beer and whisky are consumed by those most likely to vote the Democrats out of the White House.

The data has left experts scratching their heads over the results. “When we think of Canadian whisky in the United States, it’s generally an older crowd,” says Lew Bryson, managing editor of Whisky Advocate. “A lot of the time, the older crowd does tend to skew toward regular voting. I’d hesitate to say they’re more regularly Republicans.”

According to the study, however, whisky drinkers are in fact very likely to vote Republican. “A lot of what you see in these data are regional differences,” says Will Feltus, senior vice-president of research for National Media Research Planning and Placement, the Republican consulting agency that analyzed the data. He explains that whisky is more popular in the south, typically a Republican area of the country. And while Jim Beam and Wild Turkey bourbon whisky buyers skew furthest to the Republican spectrum, Canadian Club buyers are more likely to show up and vote.

Democrats tend to be buyers of the clear liquors, such as vodka and gin. “Most of the vodka adds now are focusing on flavours, which largely seems to skew to a younger audience,” Bryson says. Congnac drinkers are most likely to vote Democrat, something Feltus attributes to the liquor’s popularity amongst African-Americans.

The choice of beer and voting behaviour may come down to advertising, says Graeme Newell, president of the emotional marketing company 602 Communications. “What these liquor brands are doing is holding up a mirror to their customers and saying: ‘We’re just like you. We share the same values. We believe the same things.’” For that reason, beer drinkers’ voting behaviours are all over the map.

Bud Light drinkers, meanwhile, don’t sway much politically to either side. They simply have a low voter turnout. “I think it’s because [Bud Light] is the official beer of college campuses,” Feltus says. “Younger people are less likely to vote.”

Why Labatt Blue is more likely to be found in the palms of Republican voters remains largely a mystery to him. Labatt’s owner, major beer conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev, has donated slightly more to Democratic candidates and political action committees since a major merger in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent research group.

“Data like this, some of it is just going to be random noise,” Feltus says. “There is not always a moral to the story.”

]]>Non-alcoholic beer may be anathema to beer enthusiasts, but sales are soaring. For the fourth consecutive year, sales of Labatt Breweries of Canada’s offerings—which currently include O’Doul’s, an imported de-alcoholized Beck’s and a 0.5-per cent version of Labatt Blue—are up more than 100 per cent. That’s a sharp contrast to Canada’s traditional beer market, which has experienced flat sales and a declining share of the alcoholic beverage market. And the growing popularity of non-alcoholic beer is a worldwide phenomenon; 2.2 billion litres were served in 2012, up 80 per cent in five years, according to The Economist. As the market grows, so does choice and the quality—Beck’s is made according to Germany’s beer purity law of 1516. And most have less than 100 calories a bottle. While many quaff non-alcoholic brews for religious reasons, two-thirds of Canadians buying the beers also drink alcohol, according to industry research—they just want beer without the buzz, or the extra calories.

]]>“How does a bar in the middle of a university in the middle of Newfoundland lose money?,” says Noah Davis-Power. “That is absolutely astounding.”

Last year when Davis-Power was running for a spot on the Memorial University of Newfoundland Students’ Union executive, he pushed to see its budget. At first he was first told he couldn’t have it, because he might take it out of context. That’s an argument often used by Canadian student unionists who don’t want their budgets publicly available. Mid-election, MUNSU relented. It turned out the $1.1-million organization, financed mostly by a mandatory $40-a-semester fee, had lost $120,000 that year at The Breezeway, a campus bar it owns. This year it budgeted for a $161,000 loss.

Davis-Power says he expects future losses to be even higher now that MUNSU has decided to boycott Labatt’s beer to show solidarity with about 45 striking brewery workers in St. John’s.

“When you [remove] Labatt products you’re taking away choice and adding to the amount of people who aren’t going to go to The Breezeway,” he says, “you’re going to see the deficit increase.”

Not only that, MUNSU’s boycott has caused Labatt to vow it will stop sponsoring MUN student groups, which annually receive tens of thousands of dollars in cash, beer and other merchandise.

“There is no shortage of people out there looking for sponsorships and only so much money to go around,” says Wade Keller, Labatt’s director of corporate affairs in Atlantic Canada. “If you have a group that’s boycotting your product it makes no sense to spend your cash that way.”

MUNSU is undeterred. “We have been paying close attention to feedback from our members regarding this decision and many have expressed their support of the boycott,” writes Candace Simms, the director of external relations (to whom Davis-Power lost in last year’s elections).

“Since many of our members are, or soon will be, entering into the workforce, we feel the Students’ Union has an important role to play in defending the rights of young workers,” she adds. “During discussions on the boycott, members cited the importance of acting now to ensure current and future workplace equality.”

The average striking Labatt worker earned $81,000 last year, says Keller. Average earnings in Newfoundland were $48,000. He says the union and Labatt are at odds over a demand that employees start contributing to their pension plans in 2016 and pay 20 per cent of benefit costs.

As for The Breezeway’s deficits, Simms writes this: “The number one goal of the Breezeway is to provide a safe, accessible space where students can come and purchase affordable products. The Breezeway provides space for students to host free or low-cost events, employing over 40 students annually, and complimenting the other advocacy and campaigns work of the Students’ Union … Over the past year MUNSU has continued to make strides in reducing the subsidy the Breezeway receives and is committed to seeing further reductions.”

Davis-Power thinks MUNSU should start by dropping the boycott and staying out of such disputes. “Unless students are going to see benefits from it or it’s going to directly impact students, the student’s union should have no comment or position on outside political organizations or actions like a strike,” he says. “It really doesn’t matter to students if Labatt workers are on strike or not.”

1. Our beer is stronger than American beer: That’s bogus, a myth born out of the different methods once used to measure alcoholic content on labelling. Americans long listed percentages of alcohol by weight on the bottle, while Canadians used a measure of alcohol by volume. The difference distorts the picture somewhat, because alcohol weighs less than water, making Bud and other sudsy U.S. staples appear weak in comparison to Labatt and Molson, for example. Actually, most beers around the world hover in and around the five per cent mark, in terms of alcohol by volume—that includes the much-maligned Bud—meaning that it will get you as stinko as fast as most Canadian brews.

2. Beavers will bite off their own testicles when confronted by a predator: This myth has an old pedigree, going back to ancient times, with commentators such as Pliny and Claudius Aelianus describing how the beaver, confronted by hunters, would sacrifice its testicles, which were prized for their medicinal value, in the same way a man who is mugged might immediately present to the robber the contents of his wallet. Both NDP MP Pat Martin and literary icon Margaret Atwood have played a role in perpetuating this legend. Actually, male beavers hold their family jewels within their bodies (not like Papillon carried his money, but you get the idea).

3. Canadians burned down the White House: It’s a story a lot of Canadian kids grow up believing—that in 1814 we sacked D.C. and put our torches to the president’s house, setting it aflame (and in this way produced that indelibly American relic, the half-burned portrait of George Washington). But actually it was the British who did it.

4. Canadians own a lot fewer guns than Americans: The U.S. is a pistol-packing country, but it’s not also true that Canada carries an entirely empty holster. According to a 2007 International Small Arms Survey, there are 30.8 guns in this country for every 100 citizens. Not quite the 88.8 guns for every 100 American citizens, but enough to place Canada 13th on an international ranking of gun ownership—five times that of England.

5. Canada’s taxes are higher than America’s: We are socialists who tax the stuffing out of business, particularly in comparison to our southern neighbours, right? Not quite. Last year, for the first time, Canada ranked in the top 10 in PricewaterhouseCoopers’s global comparison of the most advantageous places to pay corporate taxes, placing eighth. Canada’s total average tax rate on medium-sized domestic companies weighed in at 26.9 per cent; it’s 46.7 per cent in the U.S., putting the Americans in 69th place.

The Maclean’s Book of Lists, Vol. 2, is now available at www.macleans.ca/bookoflists, in the iBookstore, and on newsstands. Don’t forget to tune in to City on July 1 and test your knowledge of all things Canuck with Maclean’s Great Canadian Countdown, airing at 7 p.m. EST.

When the Alma Mater Society here at the University of British Columbia revealed last year that the planned new Student Union Building (SUB) will house a brewery, students were overjoyed at the prospect of cheap, local craft beer.

Not only would a SUB brewery add some flavour to UBC’s decidedly drab cuisine, it would also significantly up the ante of our campus culture. Right now, our coolness factor is suffering. Our version of the Harlem Shake has only 156,000 views on YouTube. The University of Toronto’s has more than 2.2 million views, even beating out that legendary Lip Dub we made last year (remember that?) with its mere two million views.

Unfortunately, our vision of a business savvy, beer-producing student union may be too good to be true. It turns out that this year’s executives are not very passionate about the brewery and are moving it to the UBC Farm, which is, well, a farm, not to mention far from the heart of campus. The reason given: it’s cheaper. More specifically, building in the SUB will cost $410 per square foot, while it will cost only $350 per square foot on the farm. But seeing as we have already spent a staggering $50,000 on consultations, I am skeptical that money is the real problem. The AMS may simply be hoping negotiations fizzle and the project dies, so they can focus on less complex things.

That would be a shame. While I’m not exactly a beer connoisseur, I am all for fostering school spirit and a sense of community. This ambitious project would help do that. A student-run brewery would also attract visitors to our rather isolated Vancouver campus and contribute to the vibrant craft beer culture in the city. Of course, if we are only after natural, locally-brewed beer, it makes little difference where the UBC brewery ends up being built, as long as it’s on campus.

And if all else fails, we can always console ourselves with Tuesday beer specials at the Pit Pub.

Vivien Chang studies English Literature and History at the University of British Columbia.

]]>Molson Coors says full recovery from NHL lockout unlikely until fallhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/molson-coors-says-full-recovery-from-nhl-lockout-unlikely-until-fall/
Thu, 14 Feb 2013 23:32:24 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=351037MONTREAL – Molson Coors said it could take months for the brewer’s sales and profits to fully recover from the body blow sustained as a result of the NHL lockout.…

]]>MONTREAL – Molson Coors said it could take months for the brewer’s sales and profits to fully recover from the body blow sustained as a result of the NHL lockout.

“The impact that it had in the second half of last year is permanent,” CEO Peter Swinburn said in an interview Thursday after the company reported its year-end results.

“Going forward… I would hope that the fan base isn’t affected in any way. I wouldn’t expect it to be, given the popularity of hockey in Canada, so we’re hopeful that things will get back to normal.”

The Montreal and Denver-based brewer said it has seen a pickup in demand since the dispute ended in January, but the full benefit won’t fully resume until the fall because large retailers require up to six months to plan floor space and sales promotions.

Swinburn said the disruption to its main winter revenue driver had an obvious impact, with total sales falling by nearly 12 per cent in the fourth quarter.

But the company did point out that these losses were partially offset by operational costs, related to fewer NHL opportunities. It said marketing and administrative expenses decreased nearly 17 percent during this time.

Sales to retail fell 13 per cent, or seven per cent excluding an extra week of activity in the 2011 period, citing hockey and higher taxes in Quebec as the key factors.

Molson Coor’s Canadian market share declined one share point on an estimated industry volume decline of five per cent, excluding the extra week of business in 2011.

The lockout affected all brands but Swinburn said Molson Canadian and Coors Light sustained the biggest hit because they are the largest brands in the brewer’s portfolio.

Canada’s underlying pretax income decreased 22 per cent to US$101 million. Hockey was an important factor for the league sponsor but he said the company can’t quantify the financial hit.

“If you look at the fourth quarter compared to the previous quarters it was worse than the rest of the year and the third quarter was worse than the first and second quarter. So obviously the NHL lockout did have an effect but it’s impossible to quantify exactly to what extent.”

Swinburn had vowed last year to seek financial compensation from the National Hockey League and said Thursday the company has reached a confidential agreement.

He declined to provide any details, saying any compensation won’t be specifically identified in its financial results.

The NHL declined to comment on agreements that may have been reached with other league sponsors.

“We don’t discuss the nature of our contracts with League sponsors,” said executive vice-president Gary Meagher.

In addition to being pleased with the return of hockey, Swinburn said the early response to its new Molson Canadian advertising has been strong and consumers like its new resealable aluminum bottles.

During the quarter, sales were also affected by a 20 per cent increase in Quebec excise taxes as of November, that reduced demand across the beer industry.

“It’s difficult to say precisely what that impact is but as price goes up consumers will buy less,” Stewart Glendinning, president of the Canadian operations told analysts.

Overall, Molson Coors earned US$60 million in the fourth quarter, or 33 cents per diluted share. Net sales grew 9.9 per cent to $1.03 billion, largely as a result of acquisitions. Worldwide beer volume was up 15.3 per cent to 14.1 million hectolitres.

The quarter included a number of special items for the multinational brewing company, including US$22.8 million for restructuring, a $6.5-million charge related for its portion of an IT writeoff at MillerCoors and US$38.3 million due to tax rate increases in Serbia.

The company, which reports in U.S. dollars, said its underlying after-tax income, after adjustments, was $126.1 million or 69 cents per share.

That compared to $173.2 million or 95 cents per share of net income and $937 million of net sales a year ago. Its adjusted underlying after-tax income was $176 million or 97 cents per share.

Molson Coors was expected to earn 64 cents per share in adjusted profits in the quarter on $1.07 billion of sales, according to analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Swinburn said it marked the fifth consecutive quarter that the company has beat industry forecasts.

“I think we’re just in a better position than we were this time last year,” he said, noting that its new business in Central and Eastern Europe has gained market share in all but a couple of countries.

For the full year, it earned $443 million or $4.45 per share on $3.92 billion of sales, down from $676.3 million or $3.66 per share on $3.5 billion of sales. Adjusting for one-time items, it earned $710.5 million or $3.91 per share.

Mark Swartzberg of Stifel Nicolaus maintaining a hold rating on the stock “given continued volume under performance and no evidence of this trend reversing.”

On the Toronto Stock Exchange, Molson Coors shares were down 39 cents at C$44.21 in afternoon trading.

The era of home brew in Africa may be coming to an end. SABMiller, the world’s second-largest brewer, is wooing the continent’s illegal drinkers with dirt-cheap beer. In Mozambique, the brewer has released Impala, a beer made from cassava, the milky root used to make tapioca. At 70 cents a bottle, Impala is significantly cheaper than its malty cousins, priced at a dollar, making it affordable for the country’s rising middle class.

Zsuzsa Szilagyi, an alcohol analyst for Euromonitor International, says companies like SABMiller are looking for niche markets. “The African beer market is highly consolidated,” she says, so there’s a “big fight” for new markets.

SABMiller, founded in Johannesburg in the late 1800s, is battling with other beverage companies such as Heineken and Diageo for Africa’s growing population of beer drinkers. Impala was pitched as a healthy alternative to illegal alcohol made from sorghum—a starchy grain—and corn. (Methanol and battery acid have reportedly been included in the moonshine recipes.) The Mozambique government is giving the beer a break on taxes, seen as a way to give the economy a boost by employing farmers to produce raw cassava. One year after its 2011 launch, nine million bottles of the brew have been sold. In Uganda, the company has had tax breaks for years with Eagle beer, made from sorghum.

The beers have a different taste profile from Canadian brands. Take Chibuku, an opaque beer with the consistency of a milkshake. It’s made from sorghum and corn, and the flavour ranges from sour to sweet, depending on the region. Packaged in cheerful white, blue and red one-litre cartons, the beer ferments in the store, going from 0.5 per cent alcohol to four per cent over a period of five days, at which point it expires and must be tossed.

SABMiller is planning to use the Impala formula in Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Zambia. “We hope to extend the use of cassava as a brewing ingredient beyond Mozambique,” says Andy Wales, SABMiller’s vice-president of sustainable development. There are other unconventional beer crops being considered too, he says, but can’t “disclose specifics, for obvious reasons.”

Ontario’s Opposition leader, Tim Hudak, seems to have found the ideal hot-button issue in his promise to privatize the provincial liquor monopoly if he emerges victorious from whenever the present leaderless minority government ends up holding an election.

The future of the LCBO has been debated ad nauseam since the agency was created back in 1927. But this time the announcement actually appears to have some traction for Hudak, coming during the holiday season when budgets are tight, alcohol is in demand and there’s not much else in the way of interesting news from the provincial government to distract us.

Strangely enough, as Progressive Conservative leader Hudak shied away from the privatization issue in the 2011 provincial election, instead musing on the days a buck-a-beer, when a 24-case of domestic could be had for $24.

But after floating a few other wedge issues in the last election (prison chain gangs, the dangers of sex ed for elementary school children) to no avail, Hudak may just have found the one that actually matters to Ontarians. After all, free-flowing booze is about the only thing that could unite a 50-something libertarian in rural Eastern Ontario and a 20-something hipster in downtown Toronto.

Still, the idea has predictably touched off a firestorm of debate. B.C. Premier Christy Clark floated a similar idea back in the summer, but was forced to back down due to union pressure.

Proponents of LCBO privatization often point to Alberta, which privatized its liquor sales in 1993 and has since seen a rush of new private liquor stores, both mass market and specialty, along with a larger selection of products and longer store hours. Critics also like to cite Alberta for the downside of privatization: Namely the fact that the Alberta government has seen steadily declining revenues from alcohol sales for the past two decades and that the LCBO transferred $1.63 billion to Ontario government coffers last year, excluding taxes. (Hudak’s finance critic, Peter Shurman, recently said the Progressive Conservatives “don’t know” exactly how privatizing liquor sales will affect government revenues.)

In light of the ongoing debate over public versus private liquor stores, here is a look at some Statistics Canada data that tracks the net government proceeds of liquor sales in every province. The data removes the GST portion of the sales tax, along with what it costs provincial governments to run their liquor stores. In other words, it’s a look at the pure profits flowing into government coffers from the sale of booze.

The results here are based on revenue per 100 residents and are adjusted for inflation (in 1993 dollars, which is when Alberta privatized alcohol sales):

They clearly show that Alberta has faced declining revenue since going private, from $15.30 for every 100 residents in 1993 to the equivalent of $12.86 in 2011, a drop of 16 per cent. However, the province still earns more per capita than either Ontario or Quebec, which long ago allowed private stores to sell beer and wine, but not hard liquor. B.C., which went to a two-tiered system in 2004, has also seen its revenue drop over the years. But most of that decline actually occurred before it allowed private wine and beer sales and revenue was actually growing between 2004 and 2009.

Atlantic Canada earns by far the most per capita from its alcohol sales and, along with Saskatchewan, has been able to grow its revenue nearly 25 per cent since 1993. Quebec takes in the least per person from alcohol sales, although the province has managed to boost revenues by nearly 50 per cent over the past two decades.

What’s interesting in Ontario is that government revenues are substantially lower than other provinces that also have monopolies on the alcohol distribution and sales. Revenues per capita from alcohol have increased just eight per cent in nearly 20 years in the province. Despite moving to a privatized system, the Alberta government still takes in more per capita on alcohol sales than Ontario.

Clearly there’s more at work here than a debate over a public monopoly versus privatization. After all, governments have lots of potential policies in their arsenal to boost revenues from booze whether in a public or private system: alcohol taxes, minimum pricing to discourage consumption, fees for alcohol producers for the privilege of selling their products in government stores, fees for liquor licences. The Maritime provinces, for instance, all have large alcohol taxes on top of provincial sales tax.

One would expect that more taxes, a la Atlantic Canada, would lead to higher prices for beer, wine and spirits. On the flip side, critics argue that privatization has driven up prices in Alberta.

To test this debate, here’s a look at the price of a popular product, a standard 750 ml bottle of Smirnoff Vodka, across the country:

Quebec, which collects the lowest alcohol revenues has the lowest price, while the Maritimes, which collect the most, have higher prices. (It’s not broken down here, but at $27.98, Nova Scotia actually has the highest price for a bottle of Smirnoff in the country.) Manitoba’s high provincial sales tax helped push up its prices. Alberta’s private system has also pushed its prices toward the higher end. (The amount quoted here is from Metro Liquor Stores in Calgary.)

Ontario’s prices seem high given that government revenues from alcohol sales are comparatively low. It costs 17 cents less to buy a bottle of Smirnoff in Newfoundland than it does in Ontario, and yet the Newfoundland government takes in roughly 62 per cent more per capita in alcohol revenues than the Ontario government does.

It’s clear the issue is a lot more nuanced than the debate over public versus private alcohol sales would suggest. B.C., Alberta and Quebec have all allowed some manner of private sales of alcohol. But government revenues from alcohol sales have been growing in B.C. and Quebec. Not so in Alberta. Ontario’s liquor monopoly doesn’t seem to have helped the province boost its sales revenue all that much. Neither Ontario, nor Alberta, had the highest or the lowest prices.

There may be other valid reasons to privatize liquor sales, like better choice of products and more convenience for consumers. If it’s a matter of being able to buy beer and wine at midnight at the corner store, ending the Ontario government’s monopoly on liquor sales may be the best option. If the debate is over whether governments should benefit from higher revenues, consumers should benefit from lower prices, or that alcohol should be taxed into oblivion to keep us all from drinking too much, neither a government monopoly, nor a privatized system seems to have all the answers.

Update

In reply to this article, Jan Westcott, president and CEO of Spirits Canada, writes the following:

A case in point: by exempting beer and bottled-in-Quebec wines from their fair share of the provincial alcohol tax burden, Quebec ranks lowest amongst net return per capita.

The corollary: those provinces with the highest taxes on spirits no longer are home to distilled spirits production as manufacturers consolidated their operations in lower tax jurisdictions.

For example, Ontario jumps to the province with the highest government alcohol revenues per capita once one adds an additional $1 billion ($5.25/100 residents), directly related to local spirits manufacturing.

On a grey October afternoon at the Good Earth vineyard in Beamsville, Ont., a crowd gathers around a cluster of steaming stainless-steel vats set up mere feet from the rows of swollen grapes. Iain McOustra, a brewer with Toronto’s Amsterdam Brewing Co. and one of the architects of this madcap plan, periodically stirs a boiled concoction of grains, hops and water that has the hue of milky coffee and smells faintly like shredded wheat. If McOustra is giddy, it’s because he’s exhausted and exhilarated by this, the culmination of three years of research and planning to make a sour beer in the back-breaking style of old-world Belgian breweries.

“This is certainly the craziest brew I’ve ever done,” says the 31-year-old, who’s been brewing beer professionally and in backyards for 13 years. “It’s the most difficult brew to pull off; so much could go wrong.”

Vital to the plan is the winery environment, especially at harvest time, when the air is thick with wild yeast and bacteria that will—it’s hoped—float into the open vessels and ferment the grain mixture, or wort. This is a contemporary take on lambic beer, named after the town of Lembeek, Belgium, where the process was refined in the 1300s.

Where modern brewing methods inoculate the wort with lab-cultivated yeast varieties, traditional lambic beers were fermented spontaneously in shallow tubs called “cool ships” in wood structures where the planks were saturated with native micro-flora. “This was before there were microscopes, before they even knew what yeast was,” says Mike Lackey, a veteran brewer at Toronto’s Great Lakes Brewery, who shares McOustra’s obsessive devotion to beer making.

For Lackey, McOustra and the three other Ontario brewers involved in this opus (Jason Fisher and Jeff Broeders of Indie Alehouse and Sam Corbeil of Sawdust City Brewery), the old-world brewing process required major new-world expertise. “It takes a whole lot of science to dumb it down to the way it was done back then,” McOustra says. “It’s like throwing away everything we learned about brewing.”

It started at Indie Alehouse with a five-hour boil of Ontario milled wheat, stinky aged hops and gallons of water. Broeders and Corbeil babysat the boil overnight. In the morning, Lackey and McOustra transferred the hot wort into 20 kegs, loaded everything into a truck and, in Beamsville, emptied the kegs into the open containers. The next 16 hours, when the wort and yeast were left to mingle in the vineyard, was the fun part. McOustra and Lackey passed around an endless assortment of beers, some from their respective breweries, some wacky creations they cooked up in Lackey’s garage. Winemakers from nearby vineyards wandered over to ask technical questions about acidity and fermentation. The rest of the process was all about transport: moving the wort into 20 clean kegs, back to Toronto and then into four oak wine barrels to ferment for three years. “I’m 100 per cent confident this will work,” says McOustra. “We’ve gone overboard on everything. Typically, there would be a five-hour exposure [to the yeast]; we did 16. Typically, the wort would be put into inert barrels; ours went into unwashed barrels. We were within feet of a vineyard; others might have been within three kilometres.”

If all goes well, the brewers will end up with 800 l of wild sour beer, a wholly unique flavour more tart than sour, crisp and often fruity. They’ll name it “Niambic” (McOustra says you can call a beer lambic only if it was brewed in that region of Belgium). Plans are under way for next year’s wild brew at the same vineyard. “In a few years we can start blending the different vintages, while still maintaining the authentic localness of it.”

The craft beer Twittersphere has been abuzz with the news of a lambic-style brew in Canada. “There are no trade secrets in this world between brewers who are interested in pushing the boundaries of beer,” says McOustra. “We can’t compete with the big guys on pricing, but we can make beers with passion and craft, take chances on stuff and push the industry forward.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/a-belgian-brew-by-way-of-beamsville/feed/112 Canadian medalists from the 2012 World Beer Cuphttp://www.macleans.ca/society/life/12-canadian-medalists-from-the-2012-world-beer-cup/
http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/12-canadian-medalists-from-the-2012-world-beer-cup/#commentsMon, 16 Jul 2012 19:23:16 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=274618Canadian craft beers are making a solid showing on the international stage these days

Have you ever wondered which cities have the most bars, smokers, absentee workers and people searching for love? What about how Canada compares to the world in terms of the size of its military, the size of our houses and the number of cars we own? The nswers to all those questions, and many more, can be found in the first ever Maclean’s Book of Lists.

Buy your copy of the Maclean’s Book of Lists at the newsstand or order online now.

]]>A bumper crop of books has followed the recent proliferation of craft breweries, and this hefty tome is designed to loom over them all. Weighing in at nearly two kilograms—about as much as two pints of ale—it’s a one-stop resource for defining terms, historicizing styles and contextualizing beer business and culture, as well as a new way to settle arguments at the pub.

With over 1,100 entries by 166 contributors, the Companion is an encyclopedia in all but name. Its editor, Garrett Oliver, is brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, one of America’s largest and most esteemed craft breweries, as well as a colourful writer. He pens a polemic in his preface: “Wine, beer’s great rival . . . cannot begin to approach beer’s variety of flavour, aroma and texture.” Indeed, arriving 17 years after the Oxford Companion to Wine’s first edition, this title seeks to lend scholarly legitimacy to beer. Each entry includes a host of facts and figures, but one needn’t dwell on, say, the relative Plato gravity scale measurements of various versions of Scotch ale; there are, thankfully, some juicy bits. You’ll learn, for instance, about the battle between two breweries called Budweiser, the intemperate story of India pale ale, and the beneficence of beer gods—from Sumeria to Asgard. Subjects range from the general (“flavour”) to the historically curious (“Burton snatch”) and the self-referential (“beer writing”).

Brewing history is often murky, and not just because of hazy memories: beers and beer styles alter over time due to the inconstant availability of ingredients, the evolution of consumer taste, technological developments, laws, etc. In brewing, “tradition” is an ongoing process, and this book does an admirably comprehensive job of tracking it.

A number of beer writers have, however, questioned some of the book’s historical details and interpretations of facts—there’s a wiki online to note disputes. Perhaps the second edition will clear these up. For now, one can nonetheless enjoy the book—ideally taken with a grain of malt.

]]>The University of Regina is offering free general interest lectures served alongside pints of beer.

It’s part of a growing trend in university towns where students are proving they’re interested in learning for the sake of learning—so long as they can simultaneously eat snacks and drink beer.

The Science Pub series was created by Bev Robertson, a professor emeritus who now owns the Bushwakker Brewpub where the monthly event is held. He told the Leader-Post that he got the idea after hearing about similar events further west.

It’s an eclectic series. Last month’s lecture, Seeing the Unexpected: Peeking at the Earth from Space, was presented by geography Prof. Joseph Piwowar. Before that, Prof. David Gerhard spoke on “the DIY Robot Revolution.” This week, attendees will learn about eco-friendly house design.

The events are reminiscent of the Parisian philosophy cafés where everyday people would gather and learn over cappucinos on Sundasy. But it seems the that the Canadian version is more likely to be held in bars. Cape Breton University has a regular lecture series that is also held in a pub.

When it comes to food these days, everything old is new again, which isn’t that surprising after years of genuflecting in the church of molecular gastronomy. The only altar left for foodies to worship at is an old one. Jars of preserved goods, just like grandma used to make, line the kitchen shelves of countless restaurants. Noma, voted the best restaurant in the world last year, fashions most of its dishes from ingredients foraged from the Danish woods. Menus, including the one at Chicago’s Next, are built around a particular time and place, like Paris circa 1906. Chefs, including Charleston, S.C.-based Sean Brock, hunt down long-forgotten varieties of grains, vegetables and fruit, and Toronto’s own Jamie Kennedy prefers the rare Canadian heritage breed of wheat called red fife.

And then there’s Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist at the University of Pennsylvania Museum who, after analyzing the residue that lingers in the nooks and crannies of millennia-old potted vessels, is bringing ancient elixirs back to life. It’s gastronomical nostalgia on steroids.

McGovern, a pioneer in the field of biomolecular archaeology who did undergraduate work in chemistry and has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern archaeology, has collaborated on five beverages with Sam Calagione, the award-winning founder and president of Dogfish Head brewery in Delaware: Midas Touch, an Iron Age beer based on samples found in the king’s supposed tomb; Chateau Jiahu, a Chinese blend of grapes, rice and honey based on the oldest sample of booze ever discovered; Theobrama, a 3,200 year-old Honduran chocolate drink; Chicha, a corn beer with Peruvian lineage; and Ta Henket, an Egyptian ale being released in December with 18,000-year-old components.

Cracking the chemical codes of these long-forgotten cocktails, however, is a bit complicated. “It’s not like you just put the sample into a black box and push a button and have the answers come out,” explains McGovern with a hearty laugh. “You have to think of the compounds you’re looking for.” Those are the chemical fingerprints of organic ingredients that survive thousands of years, unlike alcohol, which evaporates in a few months. Through mass and infrared spectrometry, and gas and liquid chromatography, McGovern and his team discovered organic compounds that indicate the presence of fermented beverages.

One of his first forays into biomolecular archaeology in the 1980s had McGovern unravelling the recipe for the ancient, mollusc-based, purple dye reserved for Phoenician royalty. “That really showed that these ancient organic materials could stick around for 3,000 years, at least. And then people started coming to me with samples.” The first came courtesy of a colleague who found red stains in the bottom of a pot at the Royal Ontario Museum, which McGovern confirmed was 5,000-year-old wine from Iran.

P. E. McGovern/Penn Museum

Later samples were retrieved closer to home: in a storage room steps away from his office at the university’s Penn Museum, the 66-year-old archaeologist found two jars from the early neolithic site Hajji Firuz in Iran. McGovern had stumbled upon a grape wine from 5,400 BCE, some 3,000 years older than the previous record holder.

“And of course Midas was even better,” says McGovern, referring to the 157 bronze vessels from the Midas mound at Gordion in Turkey, a 2,700-year-old Iron Age tomb that the Penn Museum excavated in 1957. “You just had to walk up a couple flights of stairs and there were the bags [of residue] sitting there.” McGovern and his team retrieved more than two kilograms of residue to work with—a biomolecular archaeologist’s jackpot, considering only a couple of milligrams are needed for analysis. Fingerprint compounds revealed the farewell funerary dinner included spicy barbecued lamb and stewed lentils, washed down with an Iron Age grog made from an unusual combination of grape wine, barley beer and mead. “When we made that discovery,” laughs McGovern, “we were all thinking, ‘Well gee, that sounds just awful!’ That’s when we got started with the experimental archaeology, to see if we could come up with something drinkable.”

And he did just that, with Calagione providing the brewing know-how. “He’s like the rock star of the beer industry,” explains McGovern. “He says that it’s the most expensive beer he’s ever made.” Not surprising, considering it contains the best saffron, honey from Greece, malted barley native to the Middle East and yellow Muscat grapes, which DNA analysis has revealed to be one of the earliest cultivated grapes.

McGovern decided to stage a gala recreation of the feast at the museum in 2000. Pam Horowitz, the museum’s chef at the time, “came up with an interpretation of barbecued lamb and lentil stew that was so good and went really well with the drink,” raves McGovern. Dogfish Head started selling Midas Touch in early 2001 and it has since gone on to win more awards than any of the 100-plus “off-centered ales for off-centered people” that it bottles and kegs.

Not all of the archaeologist’s discoveries are made by raiding museum storage rooms. In 1999, McGovern travelled to China, where he was shown some neolithic jar shards from Jiahu, an extraordinary archaeological site in the Yellow River valley of north-central China that’s home to some of the country’s earliest pottery, the oldest rice, the earliest example of written Chinese characters, and the oldest playable instruments (flutes made from the wing bones of red-crowned cranes). Back home—with the help of many colleagues across several countries—McGovern slowly but surely identified the chemical fingerprints of the jar’s ingredients. And the mixture of mead, rice, wild grapes and hawthorn fruit was about 9,000 years old, the earliest example of an alcoholic beverage in the world.

Chateau Jiahu, McGovern and Calagione’s recreation of the neolithic grog, is the archaeologist’s favourite. “It has a sweet and sour profile that goes really well with Asian food.” It also won a gold medal at the largest beer tasting event in the world, the Great American Beer Festival, a couple of years ago. When McGovern and Calagione took the stage to accept the award, it must have been quite a sight. McGovern, with his neatly coiffed full head of silver hair and bristly salt and pepper beard, resembles a more burly, jovial-looking George Lucas, while Calagione is his leading man: a 2008 New Yorker profile said the 42-year-old, with his chiselled features, perpetual tan and surfer’s loose, muscular frame, belonged in a Budweiser commercial. “Sam took the medal and put it over my neck for me to keep,” says McGovern. “Now I have a little shrine in my office with the medal draped over the neck of the Chateau Jiahu bottle and I’ve got some of the ancient shards we analyzed right there, too.”

The Jiahu site illustrates McGovern’s hypothesis that, since the paleolithic era, fermented beverages not only satisfied dietary needs but fuelled the human imagination, giving rise to the arts, religion and even language. “It would have influenced how things developed enormously whether biological or culturally. Biologically we have the right sensory organs to pick up alcohol and we have the brain that responds to it and a digestive tract that actually is helped along by fermented beverages. Why wouldn’t you have it as one of the key components of how humans developed?” McGovern briefly pauses and continues. “It makes more sense than meat-eating, which is what the paleolithic people are always talking about. I always wonder why they don’t bring fermented beverages into the mix considering they sure like to bring them to their digs.”

The duo’s next collaboration involves a trip to Italy in March. “Sam’s got these contacts with microbreweries in Italy and they want to have this microbrewery in Manhattan on the top floor of this building looking out at the Flatiron.” Which sounds like the site of Eataly, the happening Italian food and drink emporium. “Yes, that’s it!” exclaims McGovern, but he’ll say nothing more.

Why all the nostalgia for food and drink these days? “I think it’s the whole notion, at least in our case, of a liquid time capsule transporting people into the past,” says McGovern. “And at the same time as they’re tasting, they’re discovering how it came about and how it relates to the human race in general. It’s like travelling through time.”

With beer consumption falling for seven straight years and neighbourhood pubs closing at a rate of 29 per week, traditionally suds-soaked Britain is facing a beverage identity crisis while brewers are left scrambling to find new markets for their products. And at least one, Molson Coors Brewing Co., believes it has found the answer: women.

Molson Coors, the company that resulted from the merger of the storied Canadian brewer and Coors Brewing Co. in 2005, is rolling out a new brand in the U.K. and Ireland called Animée, aimed directly at the fairer sex, which currently accounts for just 17 per cent of beer sales there. Described as “lightly sparkling and finely filtered with a delicious fresh taste,” Animée contains four per cent alcohol by volume and comes in three flavours: “clear filtered, crisp rosé and zesty lemon.”

“We are way behind almost every other beer drinking country in the world when it comes to women,” says Kristy McReady, a spokesperson for Molson Coors in Britain, noting that 79 per cent of women in the U.K. say they never, or rarely, drink beer—in part because it’s viewed as being high in calories. “Beer is seen as very masculine, the way it’s marketed and sold. It’s drank from pint glasses and sold in big boxes.”

Molson Coors, which spent two years developing Animée with the input of some 30,000 women, isn’t the only company going down this road. Danish brewer Carlsberg launched Eve in some European markets in 2006, another light, sparkling beer-like beverage flavoured with either lychee, grapefruit or peach and passion fruits. Nor is it the first time brewers have tried to shed beer’s macho image in the hopes of broadening sales. In the early 1990s, Coors introduced a clear, sparkling beverage called Zima that was meant as an alternative to the then-popular category of wine coolers. It was supposed to target men but ended up appealing mostly to women (which essentially killed any chance of anyone with a Y chromosome ever drinking it), and ended up becoming a running joke among late-night talk show hosts like David Letterman because of its “girly man” image. Zima was discontinued in most markets in 2008.

In Canada, the picture is slightly different. There are no plans to roll out Animée here, nor anything like it, since women already account for close to 40 per cent of beer sales, according to Peter Nowlan, Molson Coors Canada’s chief marketing officer. “It’s different here,” Nowlan says. “Beer plays a broader role in Canadian culture.”

At the same time, consumption of beer is holding up rather well in the face of increased competition from wine and other alcoholic beverages. According to the Brewers Association of Canada, the volume of beer sold grew by nearly 17 per cent between 1996 and 2010, roughly at the same rate as the country’s population. Spokesperson André Fortin says the Canadian industry has been successful in offsetting a global decline in beer consumption by developing new products, ranging from craft brews to the current flood of lime-flavoured concoctions. Women provide yet another opportunity. “It’s a huge part of the market that’s available for growth to brewers,” Fortin says. “That’s why you’re starting to see breweries pushing new ways of looking at beer, whether it’s beer pairings or new flavours.”

So while Molson Coors is going after women directly in the U.K., where the situation is more dire, the company has opted for a soft-sell approach in Canada. After conducting an extensive 2009 study that found Canadians increasingly associated beer with specific occasions (a weekend at the cottage, for example), the brewer has dumped the industry’s traditional, demographic-focused marketing campaigns—most of which followed a similar script: young, shaggy-haired guy opens a case of beer, bikini-clad blond models appear from nowhere—in favour of more sexually neutral spots. Hence, a recent Molson Canadian television ad highlights the appeal of a Canadian summer for both men and women, while ads for Molson 67, a light, low-calorie beer, shows an apparently weight-conscious twentysomething male in the bar enjoying a tall 67, while one of his peers is stuck with a tiny glass of shiraz (with the equivalent number of calories).

Nowlan says it’s all part of an effort to position Molson Coors products as more than just high-octane beverages to be guzzled by rowdy guys who watch hockey. He says the company also hopes to capitalize on a growing trend among Canadians—both men and women—toward beer and food pairings, particularly as young urbanites expand their gastronomic horizons beyond wine-focused European cuisines. “I think we’re seeing the start of a beer renaissance,” he says. And thankfully for Canada’s beer purists, it didn’t require any exotic fruit-flavoured malt beverages to get there.

Behind the colourful name of India Pale Ale is a colourful history: from the 1820s, the beer was brewed in the English Midlands and shipped in casks down to Brazil, around the Cape of Good Hope, and up to India, where, having aged over the rough journey, it was enthusiastically quaffed by English colonists. Nearly 200 years later, in another former colony, it’s surging in popularity. But why are so many Canadian brewers now making IPAs?

Ironically, given its imperialist history, the style has become a symbol of rebellion. It’s a bold beer, with a copper-to-amber colour, moderate-to-high alcohol content, and, crucially, a hoppy aroma and taste. For craft brewers, it’s a statement against the blandness of mainstream lagers, whose drinkers are slowly catching on—despite their often startled first impressions.

Ralph Morana, owner of Bar Volo in Toronto, recounts his first experience of craft IPAs at a beer festival in 2002. “I went, ‘Oh Christ, how can anybody drink that?’ I was a Coors Light drinker.” Nonetheless, he says, “Once your palate adapts to the bitterness, all you want is more and more and more.” To further his quest for hops, he converted his Italian café into a craft beer bar, where IPAs are his biggest sellers—and not just to stereotypical bearded, pot-bellied craft beer enthusiasts. “If you give it to a girl, they love it: ‘It’s neat; it’s floral.’ ”

India Pale Ale has caught on across Canada, with brewers such as Dieu du Ciel! in Montreal, Half Pints in Winnipeg, and Central City in Surrey, B.C., all gaining accolades for their IPAs. Morana and other local brewers have started crafting their own at Volo, and since 2009, the bar has hosted an annual Cask IPA Challenge, where judges and customers pick the best of a hoppy crop from across Ontario. The competition’s first year featured five or six legitimate entrants (among ambers and other pale ales); this year, there were 26. “Now everybody’s going on that bandwagon,” says Morana.

The IPA does have a history in Canada: in the second half of the 19th century, Molson and Labatt brewed popular IPAs for domestic consumption. But strong-tasting ales fell out of favour after Prohibition, and neither brewing giant now brews hoppy beer. Labatt does, however, own Alexander Keith’s in Halifax, which exported its “India Pale Ale” to Ontario and Western Canada in the late 1990s with great success—its name is a long-standing brand, but craft beer fans have argued it’s not technically an IPA.

Despite the fact that, as Keith’s brewmaster emeritus Graham Kendall notes, it’s a “higher hopped product” than mainstream lagers, the beer doesn’t have what the Beer Judge Certification Program considers the “moderate to assertive hop bitterness” typical of an English IPA (much less the stronger bitterness of an American IPA). Not that Kendall is concerned: “We don’t see a need to hop it more. It would so change the character of the beer that it would drive people away.”

The ubiquity of Keith’s has left some craft brewers bitter. “We’ve had complaints that our IPA was wrong,” says Stefan Buhl, brewmaster at Tree Brewing in Kelowna, B.C. “Some people are confused. But as soon as we talk to them, they are usually pretty receptive. First you have a bit of tingling from the hops, but two or three sips in, you get quite a complex profile.” Originally brewed in 2000, Tree’s Hop Head was the first bottled “American IPA” in Canada—a style that further accentuates the hoppy aroma and taste that made the original English IPAs age well across their long voyage. Like Kendall, Buhl speaks of pleasing his customers, but he wants to prod them as well. Three years ago, Tree started brewing a super-hoppy, eight per cent Double IPA, because it felt loyal customers “might want to have a different challenge.”

With names like Boneshaker and Smashbomb, Canadian craft IPAs aren’t to be trifled with. And yet, at their best, they offset their deluges of citrusy hop flavour with a sturdy malt backbone. Perhaps in the future, this balance will even bring hoppiness back into the mainstream pint. And if craft brewers achieve their bitter revolution, what will they do for an encore? According to Morana, “Sour is the next wave.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/canadians-love-affair-with-india-pale-ale/feed/21Want to get paid to drink?http://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/want-to-get-paid-to-drink/
Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:19:08 +0000http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/?p=28734It's all in the name of research

Students at Arizona State University are getting paid to drink — $60 per night.

Will Corbin, an Arizona State University professor researches the effects of alcohol by getting students drunk. “‘The biggest thing I get is, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he told azcentral.com. “You have a bar, and you give people alcohol as part of your research.’

That’s right. He has a bar in the psychology building where carefully screened students are plied with cocktails by research assistants each night at 5 p.m. They’re given three drinks in the first half hour. Then they’re put through a battery of tests related to memory or potentially risky behviour.

After they’ve sobered up, they’re allowed to leave. That typically happens around 9 p.m. — early enough to make it to a real bar.

]]>Emptying the beer fridgehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/emptying-the-beer-fridge/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/emptying-the-beer-fridge/#commentsThu, 07 Jul 2011 18:00:04 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=199955Tara Brautigam/CP
It’s last call for drinkers of Canada’s only government-brand beer. The New Brunswick liquor board, which created Selection Lager and Selection Light in March 2009 in response to…

It’s last call for drinkers of Canada’s only government-brand beer. The New Brunswick liquor board, which created Selection Lager and Selection Light in March 2009 in response to lagging domestic beer sales and cross-border competition, has stopped production of the private-label beers. Selection Light wasn’t meeting the minimum sales cut-off of 100,000 litres per year, says board spokeswoman Nora Lacey. Selection Lager met the sales cut-off, but because the beers were marketed together, the board decided to stop sales of both brews to make space in its cold rooms for different products. “It’s all peformance based; we have to look at our own brands in the same light and take the appropriate action,” says Lacey.

At $19.99 for 12 cans, Selection was a clear choice for New Brunswick’s wallet-conscious beer drinkers. But reviewers on ratebeer.com seemed to agree that when it came to taste, drinkers got what they paid for: Selection Lager scored an average rating of 1.83/5, with one reviewer likening it to “water from a cheap plastic garden hose that’s been lying in the sun all afternoon.” Selection Light fared similarly, mustering up an average of 1.64/5 and comments that are far from ringing endorsements: “Pours a clear, pale, sickly urine yellow . . . probably the worst looking beer I’ve seen but merely pathetic otherwise.”

Lacey maintains that while Selection’s sales fizzled, both beers’ first year doubled expectations, with each boasting a one per cent market share. She turns to a recent overall decline in domestic beer sales across Canada as an explanation for its demise, rather than the particular taste of Selection’s suds.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/emptying-the-beer-fridge/feed/2Two new things you should know about drinkinghttp://www.macleans.ca/education/uniandcollege/two-more-things-you-should-know-about-drinking/
Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:09:06 +0000http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/?p=27848Study shows brain damage, but that's not all

]]>Another study suggests that binge drinking damages the brain. But this time, there’s reason to be hopeful too.

Tim McQueeny, a psychology doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati (UC), looked at 29 high-resolution brain scans from students aged 18 to 25. Those who reported regularly consuming more than four to five drinks at a time had more thinning of the pre-frontal cortex, which is the area where executive decisions are made. Executive decisions include paying attention and keeping control of emotions — things that become difficult when intoxicated.

“Alcohol might be neurotoxic to the neuron cells, or, since the brain is developing in one’s 20s, it could be interacting with developmental factors and possibly altering the ways in which the brain is still growing,” warns McQueeny.

However, his adviser and co-author Krista Lisdahl Medina also had some hopeful news. Their preliminary data also show that grey matter appears to be fine in those who were once binge drinkers, but who have since abstained. That, she says, warrants further study.

The prevalence of binge drinking on North American campuses is undeniable. In the most recent National College Health Assessment, which surveyed 30,000 students, nearly one in three reported that they consumed at least five standard drinks the last time they went to a party or socialized. Five per cent of them reported having more than 11 drinks the last time they socialized.

]]>The state Duma is taking beer to task in Russia. In the past, the beverage was regulated by a 2005 law that classified it as a foodstuff. As such, its distribution did not require state licensing, and it could be advertised at night on TV and sold 24 hours a day in kiosks and supermarkets. Last week, however, Moscow almost unanimously adopted a bill that recognizes beer as alcohol. Beginning July 1, there will be new regulations for the drink that include restricted nighttime sales, and, like vodka, making it illegal to sell at street kiosks. The size of beer bottles is also set to decrease from 500 ml to 300 ml.

The new legislation is part of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s campaign to curb alcoholism and underage drinking in the country (another proposed bill is a nationwide ban on alcohol sales from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m.). Russians are among the highest imbibers in the world: last month, a report released by the World Health Organization found that Russians drink an average of 15.7 litres of alcohol a year, compared to the world average of 6.3 litres. One in five Russian male deaths is caused by alcohol. And yet, the new beer legislation will only apply to suds stronger than five per cent—just a modest proportion of beer sales—leading some to criticize the legislation as too soft.